The value of a Gemheart

[Frustration]

I was bored.

I'm assuming that a chasmfiends gemheart is roughly the size of a basketball, which I don't find too unreasonable given the size of chasmfiends, and the way it's described makes it seem like they can be held in one hand or two.

So that gives chamsfiends gemhearts a volume of roughly 7,104 cubic cm. Multiplied by an emerald density of 2.75 g/cm^3 equals 18,257.28 g.

Now the mass of spheres is measured in mg with broams being 400 mg, so multiplying that  by 1000 and dividing it by 400 we get that a gemheart is roughly equal to 48,840 emerald broams.

But it gets better.

Going by this WoB

Spoiler

Questioner

I asked this of Pat. Money system wise, a standard, like, equivalent to U.S. dollars kind of thing. Is a clear mark? I usually think of a clear mark as a dollar.

Brandon Sanderson

If you email through my website, Peter keeps all of this. I actually, these days, just write "worth about this much" in dollars and he figures out a monetary for it, because this just takes, y'know, I have to reach into the wiki and be like "Alright, how much is this worth again? How much is this?" The commodities are of different values an so he just factors it all out. I remember giving him instructions once, that sounds about right.

Questioner

I figured as much, for slaves to...

Brandon Sanderson

We're like, what does a slave make... it's, yeah.

Shadows of Self Portland signing (Oct. 10, 2015)

One clearmark is roughly a dollar.

Now a clearmark is worth 5 diamond chips, while an emerald broam is worth 1000

So multiplying our 48,840 broams by 1000 and dividing it by 5 we have a chasmfiends gemheart as being worth approximatly 9,768,000 USD. Almost ten million dollars per gemheart.

No wonder the highprinces fought so viciously over these things, and it puts a whole new perspective on Sadeas handing over a gemheart to prove he isn't in it for the money, he just handed over 10 Million dollars!

With one of these falling every week or so the highprinces must have made billions of dollars during the war of vengence.

[+Invocation]

Arguably Sadeas gave up a lot more than the 10 mil of the gemheart itself since he was also giving up his mercantile taxes from everything that would come from that gemheart as well. 
But yeah, it really puts the competition into proportion.

[Duxredux he/him]

The end value is going to be considerably lower than that as they will cut the gem to be able to hold more Stormlight. Anywhere from 60-75% of a gem is lost based on the cutting process, though if you're lucky you can only lose 40% if the gem was already mostly the right shape and is of high quality. Inconsistent gem grade can cause more losses if the poorer material has to be cut out. With a gemheart that large, I could see some of the sections from the initial cuts being shaped for broams, marks, or chips, but it wouldn't surprise me if 40-60% is lost from cutting and polishing. I've only carved some jade once, so I'm definitely no expert, but the grinding and polishing took off a lot more material than I expected. It's also possible that they would cut gemhearts into individual broams, and I don't know what that would do in terms of loss.  That's still several million, which is hefty chunk of money to toss to make a point. The value definitely explains how the contest for gemhearts became a viable method for the Highprinces to enrich themselves despite heavy casualties, equipping and paying their armies, and all the resources that go into that kind of battle.

Edited June 28, 2022 by Duxredux

[btullis76]

We know the monetary value of a gem heart is high. What is the value of an emerald broam in stormlight value?  Does the color of gem change the amount of stormlight it can hold ... and the cut the,  length of time a gem can hold it? 

[Duxredux he/him]

6 hours ago, btullis76 said:

We know the monetary value of a gem heart is high. What is the value of an emerald broam in stormlight value?  Does the color of gem change the amount of stormlight it can hold ... and the cut the,  length of time a gem can hold it? 

I'll note that the value of gems and Stormlight is a moving target, particularly with recent advancements. I'll get into that in a moment. To answer the core question, I don't think color affects the quantity of Stormlight a gem can hold, but there are special cuts that increase how long a gem will hold Stormlight. Some of what I'm going to discuss will be found in the Coppermind article on Polestones.

At the start of the Stormlight Archive, the economy that determined the value of a color of gemstones was based on their utility in Soulcasters. Emeralds are highly valuable because they power the Soulcasters that create grain and so are mobile producers of food that can support entire armies and cities. It would be expensive, but I think the war camps at the Shattered Plains in WoK could be sustained just through Soulcasting. Gems degrade and eventually break when used for Soulcasting, eliminating the risk of gemstone harvesting oversaturating the market. However, fabrial technology is becoming more and more widespread and advances and commoditization of these fabrials will alter the value of gems as specific color gems are utilized in the manufacturing process of different fabrials. As technology develops, advancements will alter the intrinsic value of a gem based on color. 

Now valuation of the Stormlight itself is mostly relevant in Shadesmar, though it almost certainly will become commoditized with the growth of the Knights Radiant, Urithiru, and the necessary expenditure of Stormlight to power Oathgate transportation. With Radiants and Shadesmar, thus far it seems like the color of the gem hasn't mattered too much, it was valuable based on the total quantity of Light. Considering Shadesmar and Radiants have methods to transfer light between spheres, the color of the gem becomes a lot less important. We see one of the first cases of bartering for Stormlight in the physical realm in the modern era when Kaladin makes a 2 for 1 gemstone dun to lit sphere trade while flying to Hearthstone at the advent of the Everstorm. That trade value is not going to be consistent, it was fast and simple to work out and Kaladin had more important business. This gets more complicated as Dalinar can now produce Stormlight on demand and the activation of the Oathgates makes the effective distance from Urithiru much smaller as determined by distance from any of the active and ally-controlled Oathgates.

 

So... to answer a broader question, gemstone and Stormlight economics were probably pretty well known at the start of the series, but the advancements in fabrial tech, the return of the Knights Radiant as consumers of Stormlight, Oathgate utilization for mercantile and personal transportation, restoration of Urithiru, first steps into fabrial vehicles, and Bondsmiths that are sources of Light separate from the Highstorm all occurring within 5-10 years should greatly complicate the economics of Light and gems value. Lirin's worries about doctors becoming obsolete with the advent of Surge of Regrowth were well considered though with incomplete data, and I have no idea how other various professions will shake out by the end of the more major advancements we've seen.

[Highprince10 he/him]

I think gem hearts would be worth so much more then just monetary value the fact that a gem heart can your entire army for a while on just a gem and be able to build walls make metal appear from air and being able dispose of waste easily is worth so much more than just how nice a gem looks. 10 million dollars in only the tip of the ice burg if you can equip feed and make shelter for your entire army all the time it is easily worth having a shard bearer with a army