Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has an entertaining and informative exploration of the monetary density of things, striving to answer the question of what, if anything, is worth its weight in gold. Starting by comparing the value per pound of basic US currency (where we learn that carrying nickles is about as weight-inefficient as carrying pennies) to comparing a variety of non-currency materials. The information is mostly presented in a number of cool graphs, but the source data is provided if you’re a data geek. Currency-wise, gold falls between $20 and $50 bills in terms of monetary density. My favorite graph is the one comparing relatively everyday items like Kobe beef, human blood, peacock feathers and Maine Coon cats, all of which generally fall in the monetary density range between dollar coins and dollar bills.
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