We’ve all probably heard or used the term “a ton of money” sometime during our life. We’ve either made it, lost it, needed it or won it. With that in mind, I thought it might be interesting to see exactly what a ton of money would be worth based on the weight of the coin or bill.
Note: All figures are expressed in US dollars and a ton is equal to 2,000 pounds as opposed to the metric ton.
Let’s start out with the penny. According to the United States Mint your average penny clocks in at about 2.5 grams. That means you would need approximately 363,200 pennies to equal a ton and your pile of pennies would come to $3,632.00.
Next in line would be the nickel. Your standard nickel weighs about five grams therefore you would need about 181,437 of them to come up with a ton. When you do the math, your nickels would equate to about $9,071.85.
Moving up the chain, a standard United States dime weighs about 2.3 grams. You would need 453.6 grams to make one pound which is about 200 dimes. Your 200 dimes is worth $20.00 and when you calculate that out per ton it comes to around $40,000.00.
Last on the list of coins (I’m skipping 50 cent pieces because we don’t come across them all that often) is the quarter. Your average everyday run of the mill quarter weighs about 5.7 grams. You would need 160,000 (give or take a few) to make a ton. That means a ton of quarters is worth $40,000.00.
Regardless of the denomination, all United States paper money is supposed to weigh one gram. Therefore, if you do the math correctly a ton of dollar bills would be worth $907,200.00.
From there you can probably do the math but a ton of fives would be $4,536,000.00, a ton of tens $9,072,000.00, a ton of twenties $18,144,000.00, a ton of fifties $45,460,000.00 and a ton of Benjamin’s $90,720,000.00.
Any of you out there from other countries are either free to message me with their country and calculations and I’ll gladly add it to this write up or you can simply add to the node itself.
Note: This write up is brought to you by a combination of a severe case of boredom, a general sense of curiosity and a large dose of underemployment.
All figures about the weight of the individual coins and bills come to us courtesy of the fine folks at the The United States Mint.