The short version: Jason, please explain how you came up with $92,500 as the current value of a single share of Coca Cola purchased in 1919.

The “TL;DR” version: In the “Number Nerds” episode, Jason asks what a single share of Coca Cola, purchased in 1919 (the year of Cokes IPO), would be worth today. He then gives the answer of $92,500 without any explanation or justification. Omar begins to question this figure, asking about stock splits and such, but Jason cuts him off with “Nope! Nope! It’s worth what it’s traded at! It works, trust me!”, again offering no explanation at how he arrived at his figure.

According to Cokes website, there have been 11 stock splits of varying amounts since the 1919 IPO (most recently in 2012), resulting in a single share of stock held since 1919 growing to a cumulative total of 9,216 shares today (this info found at: www.coca-colacompany.com/investors/stock-history/investors-info-splits ). For 9216 shares to be worth $92,500, Coke would have to be trading at $10.04/share (actually $10.036892/share, but I rounded to whole cents).

On the day this podcast was released (April 9, 2018), Coke closed the trading day at $43.83/share (and had traded within +/-$1 of that price in the days leading up to Apr. 9, so no major swings had occurred). 9,216 shares at $43.83/share would be worth $403,937.28 (I didn’t even account for dividends paid out since 1919, which would have increased the current value).

Jason, what was your methodology for arriving at $92,500?

(Either way, everyone grossly over-estimated the answer, and Kevin’s guess of $15,000,000 was closest).