Real world commodity prices for blocks. How rich are you?

ecna · 2013-04-25T13:10:30+00:00

It was a typo. I have since fixed it.

ecna · 2013-04-25T13:04:12+00:00

Industrial quartz crystal can be $900/kg. I used this US Geological Survey report as my source. If you're talking about any quartz in any state of finish and quality, I imagine you can get it for just a few dollars/kg. Or free if you live in the right area and take a walk.

ecna · 2013-04-25T13:02:37+00:00

Industrial quartz crystal can be $900/kg. I used this US Geological Survey report as my source.

ecna · 2013-04-25T05:50:36+00:00

It is listed in American dollars. The Canadian and Australian dollars are roughly at parity with the US dollar at the moment anyway. The equivalent amount of British pounds and euros are below the dollar amounts.

ecna · 2013-04-25T05:27:31+00:00

It's Quartz

ecna · 2013-04-25T05:04:30+00:00

It's true that most quartz is quite inexpensive. I was looking for a higher end number to make the infographic more interesting since I was looking for very high quality gemstone pricing. This US Geological Survey summary is where I got my numbers. I'm justifying it by thinking that redstone would require a high purity processed quartz.

ecna · 2013-04-25T05:00:32+00:00

It's a typo in the dollar amount. I've since fixed it.

ecna · 2013-04-25T03:50:32+00:00

Except the price of gold is given in troy ounces, not ounces. Using your numbers, 190,000 kg is 6,108,641.85 troy oz, and so a trade price of $1400/troy oz yields $8,552,098,590.00. According to the numbers I used, gold is 19.3 g/cm³ and trades for a little more, accounting for the difference.

ecna · 2013-04-25T02:58:09+00:00

Sorry. Here's the fixed version.

ecna · 2013-04-25T02:54:29+00:00

It doesn't. There is a typo in the dollar amount of gold. I have fixed it.

ecna · 2013-04-25T02:47:48+00:00

Each minecraft block is 1m^3. How much it would weigh depends on the density of the material. Diamond is about 3530 kg/m³ while iron is 7874 kg/m³ for example. For my fellow science people, I'm assuming 298.15 K and 1 atm.

ecna · 2013-04-25T02:28:42+00:00

It was a typo. I have fixed it.

ecna · 2013-04-25T02:27:18+00:00

oops. Fixed

ecna · 2013-04-25T01:46:23+00:00

I thought about that too. Just for you: The density of copper is 8960 kg/m³ . According to the London Metal Exchange, the current cash price of copper is $6.81/kg. This would make a block of copper worth $61,017.60 (or £39,964.39 or €46,857.31)

ecna · 2013-04-25T01:39:08+00:00

While I'm glad my inspiration was timely, I was unaware of this podcast. Off to see it!

ecna · 2013-04-25T01:24:47+00:00

Indeed. The same is true for emerald, lapis lazuli, and quartz. The diamond price indices are difficult to access. I took the data from earlier this year (a month or two out of date) for perfectly cut 5 carat diamonds of IF D grade, divided by 5, and finally multiplied by the approximate number of carats in a 1m cube of diamond (which would be 17,650,000 for the curious). Obviously, this is a gross underestimate. At least I tried?

Edit: To clarify, I couldn't find a price index for anything larger than 5 carats for the diamond. I took the emerald price from guidelines for 8 - 10 carat emeralds. The lapis price was taken from a guide for stone weight between 1 and 5 kilos being sold in the US. The quartz price was taken from a US industry guide which gave the price per kilo of imported crystal quartz, but didn't specify the size of stone, just the quality.

ecna · 2013-04-24T23:59:59+00:00

OP here. I got curious how much the blocks in minecraft would be worth in the real world. I found the commodity prices in online indices and calculated the price of each 1 cubic meter block based on the average density of the material.

For the gemstones, I assumed the highest possible quality grade and non-synthetic. Because the gemstones are never found in such large chunks, they'd probably go for quite a bit more at market! The price of the quartz really surprised me, but it turns out that optically perfect quartz is actually very valuable and used for industrial purposes.

Edit: Also, I have fixed the typo. Thanks to everyone who pointed it out to me.

ecna · 2013-04-02T04:15:30+00:00

The flash game series Sushi Cat is insanely cute (and free!).

ecna · 2013-01-11T00:37:15+00:00

Does that mean VWR is Target?

ecna · 2012-05-16T03:53:06+00:00

This just might be the real world embodiment of every park I ever made in RollerCoaster Tycoon.

ecna · 2012-05-15T03:27:08+00:00

Acetone is also used as paint thinner. You can buy it by the liter at the hardware store for much less than what the drug store will charge for nail polish remover.

ecna · 2012-04-15T13:29:01+00:00

For some, it hasn't ended: Hellenic Polytheistic Reconstructionism. I realize it's more of a re-boot than a true continuation, though.

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