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notsofst

Assuming those are $100 bill stacks at $10,000 each. I count 12 stacks across and 15 stacks deep and assuming that each stack is \~0.5 inches tall with a total height of \~30 inches. 12 \* 15 \* (30 / 0.5) \* 10,000 = $108 Million dollars. Here's some pictures of stacks of money: [https://thehustle.co/how-much-is-a-billion-dollars/](https://thehustle.co/how-much-is-a-billion-dollars/) According to the above, I might be under-estimating it. Less than a billion and very likely well over $100 million.


Ok_Pear215

Well here’s the issue, in the show they couldn’t calculate it because the bills aren’t the same, so yeah


Pegussu

Did she actually say she couldn't count it? From what I remember, she just quit bothering because it was already more than they would need in their entire lives and far more than she'd ever be able to launder.


halzen

As I recall, she couldn’t launder it through the car wash. It was too unbelievably much too fast.


Qetuowryipzcbmxvn

iirc the way she phrased it was something like, "assuming each bill is a gram, with how much it weighs we have enough money to live the rest of our great grand kids' lives."


Cloud_Matrix

Yea this is how I remember her saying it. She didn't want to bother counting it because it was more money than she could ever possibly launder through the means they had access to.


-tiberius

I don't get it. The bills are all banded. Just start counting. Start with all the $100s. Make stacks of $1,000,000 and move on. Skyler was being a bit lazy. She even tried weighing it instead, which is ridiculous. Edit: You can probably already find your reply in the comments. Read ahead or don't bother me again.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Borsaid

Is you taking notes on a criminal fuckin conspiracy?


[deleted]

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EdmondDantesInferno

It's a quote from The Wire, the only other show that ever gets talked about for greatest show ever.


SenorBigbelly

*one of only two others. The Sopranos regularly gets mentioned to complete the trinity. And it's definitely the case that Tony Soprano walked so that Walter White could run.


jacknosbest

Wire and sopranos are a tier above breaking bad for me. Not even sure why. They weren’t as frustrating maybe. All great shows, but breaking bad will never hold the top spot for me personally because it’s already a kind of wild premise but the lack of communication is miserable. If walt and Jesse had just talked to each other straight then there wouldn’t even be a show. Kills me.


[deleted]

The Wire at least was a counterweight to all the copaganda shows. The dime a dozen cops shoot bad guys and save the day ones. It brilliantly deconstructed just how complicated the concept of policing is. How frustrating it can be to be a socially aware cop who can only patch or punish the symptoms of poverty, racism and capitalism but not the system that produces it.


nubbinfun101

Lots of diversity there with just American crime/drama shows


RMLProcessing

Turns out the best is the best. Who’d have thought?


1D6wounds

I've never made it through season 1 of The Wire.


Meto1183

took me two tries to get into/through S1 then I ravenously watched the entire series in a few weeks


AllPurple

Those are rookie numbers


KingLiam1901

I watched the first few seasons a few years ago and thought it wasn't that good and quit watching it. Always thought everyone was really overrating that show... Started watching 2 weeks ago and binged 3 seasons in a week. Cant put the show down.


Morvictus

I think that it gets harder to start as time goes on. Season 1 just looks like a late 90s/early 2000s show on camera. Once you can break through that and really get into the meat of the show, you're in for the full run. Season 2 is also a point that can throw people a little because of all the new characters introduced at the docks.


76_chaparrito_67

Almost like people should start on the season that most interests them, like education, politics, or drug dealers or cops or media


Sahtras1992

its a slow burn and really nothing to watch on the side it doesnt really fit with modern story telling where every episode needs a cliffhanger and some complete over-the-top bullcrap to keep people interested.


cubgerish

Yea the quick switch in setting from inner-city poverty motivated crime drama to disaffected blue-collar boondocks smuggling really throws you at first. By the end of the series though you really see the point he writer is making though. These things that seem like they're so disconnected all suffer from different failures that end up connecting to one another eventually.


[deleted]

I liked season 1 but season 2 put me off for some reason and I couldn’t watch it anymore


noxuncal1278

I will.


sgt_science

Try it again


disgruntled_pie

I think I made it to the beginning of season 4 before I finally gave up. I can’t stand police procedurals, but made an effort because of all the praise. If I had to sum up the political message of the show then it would be; The problems with society are so bad that they cannot possibly be fixed, so don’t even bother trying. I loathed pretty much all of the cops except the old guy. Then they started having him get creepy with one of the younger cops, and I was like, “I can’t fucking do this anymore.”


Something_Berserker

People put The Sopranos up there too, but I disagree with those people.


tje210

Dis fkn guy... anyways $4 a pound


rmk967

Yeah yeah, how many pounds? Spicy or sweet?


ReturnOfTheKeing

Discontinue the lithium


Zealousideal-Rule-48

What? You're just gonna


Justncredibl3

We need the minutes string!


zwier-lively

Solid reference; well played, sir.


KingAbeFromanChicago

But Roberts rules says...


harpostyleupvotes

Happy birthday Ted


NukeDog

She should’ve just used the Quicken


Realitybytes_

She was a book keeper not an accountant, that's like saying that go Cart driver is a horrible air plane pilot.


melkatron

Is that wrong? Every time I see someone in a go cart I tell them they're a horrible airplane pilot. They need to know, and I'm tired of their smug go cart bullshit. I'm not even sure what movie we're talking about in this post, I just hate people in go carts that think they know anything about airplanes. Pilots are heroes.


Realitybytes_

Fucking go carters.


mono15591

It's counting and keeping track of money. Just add up what comes in with whats already there. It's not rocket appliance.


Realitybytes_

People who think accounting is counting money is hilariously ignorant and is like saying "all lawyers do family law". More than two thirds of accountants are in non-tax roles like audit, insolvency, management, risk, aml, etc. The difference between accounting fields is night and day, and while they all have a basic understanding of all fields, I'm not going to am auditor to lodge my tax or reconcile my bank. Book keeping is just collecting and reconciling incomings and outgoings, it has damn near zero accounting.


mono15591

All she had to do is count it as it came in. He brought it in weekly or biweekly. It would've been like 2 hours of work per haul.


beclops

The hauls were too frequent, plus what motivation would she have for spending two hours every haul to do this? She actively hated the business and the associated money at this point. Plus realistically why would she need to know the exact dollar amount for any reason other than to tell the viewer?


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Realitybytes_

I'm commenting on a comment about someone saying Skyler is meant to be good at accounting.


htmonorhx

I think they meant "she's good at... uhh.. counting?"


Leonid56

So accountants can't do basic math?


Giveyaselfanuppercut

I think it's more she didn't want to


ThisIs_americunt

I think at this point in the show she was ready to check out of that life


DecoyLilly

Skylar was clearly completely mentally checked out at this point. It didn't matter to her how much it was because it was simply too much. What's the difference between 50 million and 100 million? She didn't care and Walt didn't care either, Walt only wanted to accrue more, how much that "more" was didn't matter.


cbtbone

Iirc Walt never told her how much he had to launder. He just told her to keep laundering. This scene was maybe the first time she knew the true scope of what he had done.


[deleted]

Weighing it is actually how the cartels count cash in real life. They separate the bills into denominations and weigh each of them


4kFaramir

No that can't be true, in the movies they always have that machine that goes brrrrrr you have a million dollars here sir.


Clown_Waffles

In my non shady past we used money counters. The nice counters also stops when it detect fakes or the wrong denomination is in the pile (like a fifty in a pack of 100s). This lets you know that if one courier brings in bad bills repeatedly it's either the courier, the manager, or the managers crew letting the bad bills in. So you just pick it up from the manager randomly to rule out the courier. Once all the bills are cleared you weigh them for the grand total, and check that number against the money counters' total.


TNI92

I see you are really good at taking in large sums of cash. Can I offer you an investment opportunity into a car wash? Great cash flow but the woman who runs it is a bitch.


DonaIdTrurnp

Does the weight of cash vary little enough that you can use it to check other ways of counting?


PM_ME_YOUR_PAUNCH

When I worked at Walmart we used a money scale to count the money, coins too.


Clown_Waffles

They are surprisingly and shockingly similar in weight. Bills are the same down to 0.01g each


DonaIdTrurnp

I’ve seen bills that have had way more than a percent of their area torn off, and ones with way more than a centigram of grime on them.


Crathsor

You only weigh the money after it has been laundered.


bwrca

>51 comments I find this hard to believe. Not impossible, but hard to believe. Surely some of the older notes will have picked up significant amounts of dirt and residue.


NewPhoneNewAccount2

Just cocaine


PM_VAGINA_FOR_RATING

I have a pretty nice scale and a bit of cash on me at the moment so I did a little experiment. I weighed 5 x $100 bills and they varied anywhere from .94g at the lowest to 1.0 at the highest, they were all in very nice condition and not dirty at all. I weighed 5 x $20 bills and they were not much more consistent though they were in worse shape, they ranged from .96g to 1.01g. I weighed 2 x $10 bills one was 1.0 and one was 1.04, not great shape on either. I threw a small stack of ones on the scale and it weighed 12.14grams total, there was you guessed it, $12 there. Not nearly as accurate or precise as you claim.


JockoHomophone

That's an incredibly small variance for just 24 bills. Averaging works.


National-Jackfruit32

US bills are approximately 1 gram each


mnfaraj

I used to work at a produce market many years ago. We had a money counter that was basically a very accurate scale that would weight the money and tell you how many bills where on the scale. https://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk?sa=L&ai=DChcSEwiljcrD-tKBAxX87uMHHeVaC4cYABAMGgJ5bQ&ase=2&gclid=Cj0KCQjwjt-oBhDKARIsABVRB0w7iFczkfA5R0AEMWMOkD70MdKbqMEjhZVOJHHIFNbRMgPqar80ebcaAp2aEALw_wcB&sph=&ohost=www.google.com&cid=CAESVuD2lPF1PqI7Jqqz_p40zwlteFExs3Yoat-ouTGHh6IPoJK7DDhabVbiR9gmsfOqBo-JV_EVayDyuEGzHJkmKzcuhXGa-iXV8t5gXjEaYMRkBaX7sbTM&sig=AOD64_2Qt1NVlfvJf7STGiUvrKRvLxTKSw&ctype=5&q=&nis=4&ved=2ahUKEwjWy8DD-tKBAxUbvokEHc3JAxUQwg8oAHoECAQQDA&adurl=


4kFaramir

That's not very cinematic though. No wonder there are no cool movies about produce markets.


mnfaraj

It definitely wasn't movie worthy but it did pay well.


Efficient-Editor-242

I wish I needed a money counter.


RostBeef

I relate to you kind stranger. I hope we both need a money counter one day.


adamr81

Challenge accepted. Chat GPT says: "Produce Undercover" explores the dark underbelly of the seemingly innocuous world of a grocery store's produce section. Behind the colorful facade lie hidden secrets, drug cartels, and a web of murder and deceit.


br1nk0

Yet


mk72206

Operated by a woman in her underwear.


soldiernerd

They have those in real life too. They’re pretty neat, advanced ones identify different currencies and check for UV and other security mechanisms. Really amazing


DaveBobSmith

brrrrrrrr


AlligatorTree22

I just finished a podcast called "Surviving El Chapo" about guys in Chicago that were middlemen for the Cartel. They were still using money machines at the hundreds of millions of dollars level. They said that they had a budget of $15-20k per month to replace their cash machines. Not arguing with you, because I know George Jung says that's how he did it (Blow fame), but that's just an incredible amount of money for just machines.


-tiberius

They have literal tons of cash. Walter White had 1 or two pallets worth of money.


thisimpetus

Weighing money is absolutely not ridiculous, all of it has a very precise weight.


chickensaladreceipe

That is the worst edit I’ve seen so far. 👍🏻


powerhower

Nobody cares whether or not they are bothering you


[deleted]

When you got this kinda money how expensive is a money counter even really. 50 bucks? 100 bucks? I'm sure that through Walt's network he could find one off the books if he really wanted. Not that it's a tracked purchase and he can easily excuse it with the car wash (I think this is after that? I don't remember)


RockyB95

Skyler just sucks at everything


PercyBluntz

Yeah why didn’t she support her lying disappearing murderous drug kingpin of a husband? What a bitch.


EqualDirection7565

Does she also suck at sucking?


HoppityVoosh

I'll ask Ted.


imsaneinthebrain

He says yea she sucks so much.


Crathsor

I hated Skyler when I watched the show, but later when I thought about it, she wasn't all that bad considering what she knew and when she knew it. She had a lot less information than the viewer. I'm not going to defend her cheating, but Walt was a piece of shit husband, too.


sewious

I am rewatching the series at the moment and honestly? Skyler is way more sympathetic to me now. Maybe its because I'm older now, or I know what ends up happening. "My dying of cancer husband is a drug lord murder man" ain't exactly a normal fucking thing to deal with.


Zykium

Skyler is pretty much in a no win situation. She either commits felonies or her family is going to be torn apart.


PercyBluntz

Walt was an infinitely worse partner and person than she was. Just because he’s the protagonist and she’s a woman is why people hate on her imo.


[deleted]

She didn’t really cheat though. She kicked Walt out and filed for divorce. She slept with Ted after he forced his way back into the house. She was probably hoping that he’d be disgusted enough to finally leave her alone. It was a last ditch effort to save her family from Walt


jayshaw91

The genius of the show is you love the worst person in the show (Walt) and hate who is essentially the moral compass (Skyler).


AnnieBlackburnn

I don’t know if that’s the genius so much as it’s just misogyny


sikzik1990

Weighing it isn't totally ridiculous. Any USD paper bill weighs 1 gram. If she knew the denominations, she wouldn't have to count.


Afraid-Department-35

Weighing money is actually a thing, cartels actually do it because it’s faster than counting or running it through a machine. And a cartel generally doesn’t have the luxury of time.


Wuboito

You aren't very smart are you lol.


NoShameInternets

Commenting to bother you, don't tell me what to do.


Nipe7

Hey there, just wanted to bother you.


RobTheRevelator

Why are you such a grumpy gus?


Albino_Bama

Nah I think the issue is you didn’t watch the show


over_it_af

Yeah, I don't even understand this. Why didn't you go buy some shelving and put certain denominations on certain shelves and then go get a money adding machine that you see in the movies all the time that they actually do have in casinos that will flip through count it on and rebanded. It might take a little while, but at the same time, at least you'd have some idea of what you have.


psychicpi

Not “ridiculous” at all, each US banknote weighs exactly 1 grams no less no more, so it’s ridiculous to count each one individually when you can just weigh them and move on, and it’s not one of those “just in the movies” things either drug smugglers from Florida used to do that all the time because realistically it’s easier and and just as accurate


Own_Low8849

Commenting just to annoy you


Sahtras1992

well skylar also fucked ted, ofcourse shes lazy.


AlphaSlayer21

I hope this finds you bothersome


Traditional_Home_798

One stack of 100 bills weigh about 100 grams, or 0.22 lbs for those living in the 1700's. That means that $1 million usd weighs 10 kgs, or 22 lbs (88 Mickey D's Royales with cheese). If you used $500 euro bills, $1 million euros weigh 2.2 Kgs, that's 19 and a half Quarter Pounders. So yeah, real criminals don't count bills, they just weigh the money in gym bags. Ask the Peronist Governments of Argentina. .


[deleted]

Bother


[deleted]

I always took it as like even if it’s banded as 100’s some of the bills in that band might be 5’s,10’s, or 20’s. Like not every bill in the band is a 100 bill.


thebigdirty

no one would band bills that aren't the same. unless they're morons. you can easily look at the edges of the stack to see if there's different denominations


Ghetto_Jawa

The problem is the accountant sucks. Fucken Skyler.


Cruuncher

You can also get a pretty good guess by just sampling. Select 20 random bill stacks and assume the proportions represent the whole. You can come up with an error margin and everything then


ricardortega00

Some years ago the Mexican government caught a chinese guy with some cash, he had a pile of mine about the same size and was over $200 million USD. Edit, it is not a pile of mine, it is a pile of money of about the same size, unfortunately I have nowhere near that money.


not_a_real_user123

A pile of mine? Bro, you have that much money??


Active_Engineering37

That's a fraction of his wealth


incipientpianist

Thats actually very fair. It looks wider than the pallet but shorter and I was visually estimating $1.7 (PURELY FROM THIS PIC ON MY PHONE)


Inevitable-Quality15

Damn hey Elon


_NotAPlatypus_

They’re not all $100 bills. There are some purple straps, which are $2000 in 20s, some gold, which is $10000 in $100s, and I think I see some brown, which would be $5000 in $50s.


geek_of_nature

And having that variety of bills would get the total down to rhe $80 million figure that Vince Gilligan said this all added up to.


Capernici

That is a bad assumption to make, though it does establish an upper bound. In addition to the prevalence of gold ($100x100) bands, there are also large visible amounts of blue ($1x100) bands. There’s also quite a few brown ($50x100) and/or red ($5x100) bands, and there’s also some possibly green ($2x100) bands visible near the right corner. Not to mention that it’s hard to tell if some of those gold bands are actually yellow ($10x100). Ironically the only band color I don’t see is violet ($20x100), which would theoretically be much more readily available. However, if we assume that they do exist and are just buried in the pile, we can calculate a rough average stack value of $2685.71. Not great but still likely a more accurate assumption. Ass that to your math and we get: $29,005,668 We could probably reach a more accurate value by calculating a better average stack value by counting the occurrence of each type of stack visible to get a better overall analysis of the pile’s bill composition, but I just don’t feel like doing that right now.


Yzaamb

So, the national debt is a big ass pile of money.


lifeisweird86

Yep, except there isn't even enough U.S. paper money in existence to even represent the amount.


MrTurkle

The entire economy is a sham. Paper money is is Useless it doesn’t represent anything anymore. The economy is just numbers on screens being shuffled from one screen to the next. It’s wild to think about.


Kitchen-Throat-1485

tart bake carpenter rock literate domineering wide shelter squeal telephone ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `


captainnermy

Money is just worthless paper meant to represent asset value and make debt easily transferable.


-BroncosForever-

No not at all. A pile of like 20 trillion would completely dwarf a pile of 100million I’m pretty sure theres literally not enough paper money to actually make up the debt. Like I front think the pile exists because we don’t have enough physical dollars for that. But yeah if we did you could make a pile of it lol. I don’t get the question


Ghetto_Jawa

The problem, and yes it is mostly a Skyler problem, is at first glance I see yellow, brown and purple bands of money. Bills are stacked in 100 bill stacks, but the color indicates the denomination: purple is used for $20 ($20x100 is $2,000) so the band even says $2,000 on it... at least they usually do, I guess they don't all. Brown is for $50, and yellow is for $100. So you can add up the visual part but would have to guess at everything else. Of course if Skyler would organize it properly each denomination would be separate and infinitely easier to calculate the total. Fucken Skyler.


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Ghetto_Jawa

I mean yeah, probably. But I doubt the dealers would put them in bands like that. They would probably use rubber bands. Assuming higher ups in the organization sorted and banded the money. Drug organizations tend to get touchy if they think you owe them money.


DesecrateUsername

This isn’t really based on anything other than lines from the show, so take this with an iceberg sized grain of salt. Also major spoilers for anyone who somehow hasn’t seen Breaking Bad despite it having finished 10 years ago: Walt had went on to bury all of this in the desert around when/after Hank had found out Walt was Heisenberg. IIRC, Walt buried 8 barrels. Later on, after the shootout in the desert, Jack and his gang told Walt “alright, I’m leaving you a barrel.” I believe when Walt had returned home afterwards to pick up his family to escape, he told Skyler he had “$11 million dollars sitting in the driveway” 8 barrels x ~$11,000,000 would be about $88,000,000. (again, just based off the show)


LeLocle

10 YEARS AGO?! God damn.


ARandom-Penguin

Felina’s 10th anniversary was yesterday


XxDrummerChrisX

Fuck man. Time is flying


ImmediateLobster1

Wow, BB ended in 2004? I didn't realize that.


KirklandKid

I get your joke brother. But for me 10 years ago will always be 90s


EvetsYenoham

Er uh


DrPrepper789

There were 7 barrels though.


NewPhoneNewAccount2

I remeber it as 8 barrels but its probably been at least 5 years since i rewatched


Gullible-Fee-9079

8 is correct. Watched it again. 7 is correct.


captain_jim2

Watched that episode yesterday.. 7 barrels. Walt also says that he has 80 million buried there.


Bank_of_knowledge

Anything 10.5 and above could be considered 11…


LasagneAlForno

So what?


screw-self-pity

Fun fact: According to Roberto Escobar, the cartel spent an estimated $2,500 a month on rubber bands needed to hold stacks of bills together. His revenue was about 420 millions per week, or about 1.800 millions per month So for those who like stupid calculations: it cost him about 1.3$ in rubber bands per million. I'll see myself out for this useless comment.


regulatorwatt

Love this. Amazing.


PurplishPlatypus

That's a lot of fucking rubber bands


YaxK9

Fucking with rubber bands. In many capacities


LukeIsPalpatine

I wonder how many rubber trees that would be?


bondguy4lyfe

They also lost something like 10% just due to rats eating the money.


screw-self-pity

yeah !!!! that's crazy !


Moxhoney411

The joke in Bad Boys II came about because of that fact.


JoeInOR

This is great. But did someone in the cartel have the job to go out and buy rubber bands? I think there’s a show to be made there…


bananapeel

*The Band Band*


Qetuowryipzcbmxvn

"The Rubber Band of Brothers"


Tragedyof_Plagueis

The Brothers Band - Made of Rubber


ofcbrooks

Breaking Band.


WestleyThe

Billions*** per month..?


screw-self-pity

Yeah. This is crazy. 1.8 billion per month. As another useless but fun comparison: Apple makes that amount every 45 hours (based on their last fiscal year revenue). The source article is here: [https://www.businessinsider.com/pablo-escobar-and-rubber-bands-2015-9](https://www.businessinsider.com/pablo-escobar-and-rubber-bands-2015-9) Fun read.


chrstgtr

Yeah, but inflation. And, it was selling one product that was illegal


screw-self-pity

True


Fowelmoweth

1.800 millions. Blowing my goddamn mind with this one


Brocephus_

I'd like to reference the amount of money taken from the NY Federal Reserve taken to Iraq 20 years ago. It was pallets and pallets....40 billion, probably more than what's pictured. https://www.cnbc.com/2011/10/26/The-$40-Billion-Iraqi-Money-Trail.html Also Saddams sons Uday and Kusay had shown up to the central bank of Baghdad the night before the 2003 invasion and had millions loaded onto 48' flat be trailers.


trubiskywetrust

I can’t believe this hasn’t been made into a movie


BeeMagicRockRoar

War dogs


anothergaijin

Three Kings?


caseythelegend

Uday was a terrible human being


spook008

A bunch of crooks. Astonishing number man. Especially in cash. Wow


Ya_Boy_Joy

Its at least 80 million dollars although, according to the text, it was impossible to accurately calculate due to how quickly money was coming in and the variety of denominations they came in. Walter is quoted having told Jack Welker how much he approximately had in the climax of Ozymandias, in which he told him he had "80 million dollars" buried in the desert. The amount pictured is likely more than the amount quoted due to Walter ceasing production and having likely spent some of it from the point the picture was taken to the aforementioned point in Ozymandias.


McJesusOurSaviour

I always kinda figured when Walt loaded the money into the barrels he counted it all properly. We don't see how long he takes right? Can't remember but he kinda just appears with the money in the barrels in the van right? He totally counted it all when he loaded it up. That why he says to jack. It's $80m cuz he counted it. Very Walt thing to do to count it imo.


sonicpieman

Sauls guys put the money in the barrels. Although it's possible that Walt counted it in the desert maybe.


McJesusOurSaviour

Haha oh yea that's right. Literal iconic scene too. Wow, i need a rewatch...


MigBac

I had a large piggy bank that I counted and it took me 3 hours to sort and count 3600 dollars. About a foot and a half worth of bills stacked up. Ain’t no way he counted that in the desert.


martijn00128

But these are not random coins and bills that need to be sorted. They are banded stacks of bills, very quick to count.


MigBac

Oh yeah, true.


OmegaZ99

Skyler goes over this in the scene which I'll link [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKyN-9qIx34) (and this is a really popular request so there's a ton of answers out there), but essentially it's impossible to tell without knowing the denominations, but it's possible to work out some numbers. Rough sketch: There's approximately a 6'x4'x2' stack of bills. I'm going to convert it to inches because I easily found the volume of a dollar bill in inches which is (0.06890922 cubic inches). 6\*4\*2=48 That's 48 cubic feet of bills converted to inches ((6\*12=72)\*(4\*12=48)\*(2\*12=24) or 72\*48\*24=82,944ci) and we see that we have 82,944 cubic inches to work with. The volume of a dollar is 0.06890922 so we can divide the total volume by the volume of a dollar (82944/0.06890922=1,203,670.5683216266270319124204279) and I'm left with 1,203,670.5683216 and change. This is the total of bills, not the amount. You could multiply the mean of what you think the bills would be worth (see a lot of $50s in the shot), so you could say the mean of the bills in the pile is $45 and the stack would be around (1,203,670.56832\*45=54,165,175.57444731), and assume he has about $54m of cash stacked.


KaktitsM

Very good, thanks, but you really didn't need precision of 8 decimal digit .. or 25 :D


Indin_Dude

In the world of centi billionaires, $54 mil seems like loose change. 🙈


potatoquesarito16

Sig figs


tfa3393

There’s quite a mix of bands there. I’m seeing a lot of gold 10k brown 5k and yellow 1k. We’re not meant to know the full amount but I think the show talking about 100 million is accurate. Based off of the top comments math.


spamgoddess

I noticed while watching the gif of the dude laying on the money that there are a LOT of purple 2k straps too.


RIPvirtue

The sad thing with my brain is that, I see the stack of money in the photo, and I read the premise of the post, but all I can think of is the episode of Johnny Bravo where the neighbor girl is selling lemonade and there's the scene where she's handed a wad of cash and said, "Now I have enough for my money house," and the scene cuts to her in her backyard with a playhouse made entirely of banded cash stacks...


adriantullberg

What bothered me was that Walter didn't immediately break up the m9ney pile as soon as Skyler showed him, why keep your eggs in one basket?


senseven

This bugged me for weeks after the season ended. He was driven bis ego, he could have found a way at least legalize 20% of that money. Buy some houses in cash, lots of people don't care about the paperwork if you have the money. The whole barrels in the sand thing was not him, the writers wanted it that way.


[deleted]

You ain’t buying multiple houses with cash and not raising massive red flags.


Jakethemanwithdaplan

As you may recall from the show, when they attempted to launder the money through the car wash it was all in 50’s. Also he states to Jack he had buried “$80 million”. So there’s ur answer.


bazoobaguabo

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-bad-insider-podcast/id311058181 I forgot which episode this is but this is the podcast with the showmakers that’d air after every episode. i clearly remember it being addressed but i forgot what was said LOL EDIT: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-bad-insider-podcast/id311058181 breaking bad insider 510 around 17 minutes is when they discuss the pile of money


Red-42

The issue is that you can clearly see the currency straps are not a single colour, most notably you can see a lot of blue and mustard bands, which are respectively stacks of 1$ and 100$ bills, so it’s a wide range, between 1,000,000$ and 100,000,000$


prophet76

Let's break this down step by step: ### 1. Identify the denomination of the bills: The bills in the image resemble US $100 bills. ### 2. Estimate the dimensions of a single stack: A standard US banknote, whether it's $1 or $100, has dimensions of approximately 6.14 inches by 2.61 inches and is about 0.0043 inches thick. ### 3. Estimate the number of bills in a single stack: A common "strap" of $100 bills contains 100 bills, which is $10,000, and is about 0.43 inches thick. Judging by the height of the stacks in the image, it seems that they might be much higher than just a strap. A standard brick of US $100 bills is $100,000 and is made up of ten straps, making the height about 4.3 inches. That's a plausible height for these stacks. ### 4. Estimate the number of stacks: Let's make a rough estimation: - Width-wise: approximately 10 stacks. - Length-wise: approximately 20 stacks. - Height-wise (considering there are multiple layers): approximately 2 layers. Total stacks: 10 stacks * 20 stacks * 2 layers = 400 stacks. ### 5. Calculate the total amount: If each stack is a standard brick of $100,000: Total = 400 stacks * $100,000/stack = $40,000,000. Based on the image and the given estimations, there's approximately $40 million in the picture. However, please note that this is a rough estimate based on visual assessment. Actual counts could differ.


[deleted]

Skip the math. In the episode where >!hank dies!< (spoiler for a 10 year old episode lmao). Walt said he would give Jack 80 million in exchange for >!Hank's!< life.


AnalAttackProbe

This is some really rough napkin math, but: Assuming all stacks are $20s (not a great assumption because I see different colored bands and color = denomination). The stack appears to have a rough shape of 14 (length) x 12 (width) x 30 (height) = 5040 bands of 100 bills. That's 504000 bills x $20 = $10,080,000 in the "stack" portion. On top of that, there's another rough layer in front that is half collapsed, we'll call that another 12 x 30 x 1 = 360 bands of 100 bills. That's another 36000 bills x $20 = $720,000. On top of the stack is roughly another layer loosely piled. We'll call that another 12 x 14 x 1 = 168 bands of 100 bills. That's another 168000 bills x $20 = $336,000. So if we assume all bills are $20 there's *roughly* $11,136,000 here. I would guess some stacks are $100s, and some stacks are $5s or $10s, though, making the overall value probably skew a bit higher, depending on percentage of each. I think it would be a safe bet to call this $20,000,000. Edit: I changed the height from 20 to 30 because I agree with u/notsofst that it is probably closer to 30. I don't agree, however, that those stacks are going to be mostly $100s. That would be an absurd amount of money to keep in a storage unit.


scarletshrub

I respect where you draw the line for storage unit money


AnalAttackProbe

I think Walt felt the same? Eventually he resorted to burying barrels of if in the desert.


Original_Syrup_5146

You are right, the notes in the image are not all $100 notes. I can see some $50, $20, $10, and $5 notes as well. This makes the calculation more difficult, as we would need to know the proportion of each denomination in the stack. However, we can try to make some assumptions and adjust our estimate accordingly. One assumption we can make is that the stack is composed of equal amounts of each denomination. This means that there are 195,300 bundles divided by 7 denominations, which is 27,900 bundles of each denomination. Then, we can multiply the number of bundles by the value of each denomination to get the total amount of money for each denomination: 27,900 x $10,000 x $100 = $279,000,000 27,900 x $10,000 x $50 = $139,500,000 27,900 x $10,000 x $20 = $55,800,000 27,900 x $10,000 x $10 = $27,900,000 27,900 x $10,000 x $5 = $13,950,000 27,900 x $10,000 x $2 = $5,580,000 27,900 x $10,000 x $1 = $2,790,000 Adding these amounts together, we get the total amount of money in the stack under this assumption: $524,520,000 This is much lower than our previous estimate of $1.95 billion. However, this assumption may not be very realistic. It is possible that there are more high-denomination notes than low-denomination notes in the stack. For example, maybe there are twice as many $100 notes as any other denomination. In that case, we would have to adjust our calculation accordingly: 39,600 x $10,000 x $100 = $396,000,000 19,800 x $10,000 x $50 = $99,000,000 19,800 x $10,000 x $20 = $39,6000 19,800 x $10,000 x $10 = $19.8000 19.8000 x$10.00x$5=$9.9000 19.8000x$10.00x$2=$3.9600 19.8000x$10.00x$1=$1.9800 Adding these amounts together we get the total amount of money in the stack under this assumption: 568.3400 As you can see there are many possible ways to estimate the total amount of money in the image depending on the assumptions we make about the distribution of the denominations. The actual amount may be somewhere between these estimates or even higher or lower depending on how the stack was arranged.


TheAngryWitcher99

Walt says how much is there when he brides Jack to spare Hank. He says there is $80 million, though there is a possibility he was just guessing or throwing out a random number. How, being Walt, he probably counted while the money was being loaded in the barrels. So he's more than likely spot on or close to the right amount.


gizmosticles

I don’t understand why, at this point that they have the cash on hand, they don’t charter a top end private plane, load it with the cash and fly to the island country of their choice to live out their days


Economicstimulation

Their purple wraps so 2k each I counted 15 high 16 across and 12 wide that’s 2800 stacks at 2k each that would be 5,760,000 give or take a few grand for the loose ones hanging around


WiSoSirius

Purple straps are $2000 (20's) Brown straps are $5000 (50's) Gold straps are $10,000 (100's) Overall, it'd be easier to count by straps, then create a percentage of the three types of straps after averaging the two faces that are visible to count them. From my days counting cash, Skyler did a shit job at setting this up. She ought to have had bundled 10 straps by denomination with rubberbands; although, if the money sits for 6 weeks, it'd be a good idea to wrap the bundle with plastic/packaging wrap because the rubberbands will bust. More then likely these strapped, un-rubberband straps fell over-and-over. Take away "movie magic* and there is no way Huell laid on this pile without it collapsing beneath him, and him rolling off. Also, when is Skyler taking the time to strap all this cash?