Most Vauable Commodity by Price

The New York Times reported in the March 13 issue on Col Ghadafi of Libya and how he has something like $12 billion in currency in his bank and how he keeps that much currency around just in case he needs to get away. Apparently, Ghadafi is smart enough to realize that as soon as he ceased being a head of state his deposits in foreign banks would be frozen so that cold hard cash would be the only way he could be sure that he could leave Libya with money. But cash, the article says, is not only cold and hard but heavy. A US bill weighs about one gram, so an ounce of $100s would be $2800. A pound of money would total about $40,000 a goodly sum for you or me but not one that would keep the Colonel and his cadre for very long. A hundred pounds of money would be $40 million, riches for most of us but still small change for a dictator. No, if Ghadafi wanted to cut and run with as much as possible in paper assets in a suitcase he had better start collecting stamps. He should buy 10c 1847s (Scott #2) of the US, negotiable anywhere in the world and with 20 stamps to the gram (worth $10,000) an ounce of # 2s would be worth at a bit more than $1/4 million and a pound at close to $4 million. He could take a fifty pound suitcase of US # 2s on any international flight, carrying $200 million without incurring any overweight luggage charges. But dictators aren’t usually philatelically astute and Ghadafi probably isn’t even a collector at all. But getting a hernia lugging the cash he has stolen out of Libya is probably the least of the things he has to worry about.