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Note: This article assumes the reader's familiarity with the fictitious GeekGold economy at the BoardGameGeek website.
Have you ever wondered how much all that GeekGold you've been collecting from GeekMod or been giving away generously through tips is really worth? If you figured it was a worthless virtual currency, then think again! Turns out your GeekGold is worth more than the Mexican Peso, Japanese Yen, Indian Rupee, and a whole host of other national currencies.
From this table summarizing all of the GeekGold exchanged for US currency via Auctions, you can see that since the Auction feature was introduced in July of 2005, 10,179 GeekGold has been exchanged for $1,444.38 for an average value of 7.05 GeekGold per Dollar, making each GeekGold worth a little over 14 cents. It's also impressive that in just over 4 months, over $846 has been spent purchasing GeekGold via the Auctions in 2007.
This table shows the lowest and highest exchange rates over the past couple years, as well as the average exchange for each month that GeekGold has been exchanged via the Auctions. You can see that contrary to common belief, GeekGold has not declined in value recently, but actually increased in value since the Summer/Fall of 2006.
Finally, here is a graph of all of the 105 transactions exchanging GeekGold for US currency. You can see that while the exchange rate has fluctuated a bit since the Auctions were introduced, it has remained surprisingly steady (and appears to have become more stable over time).
Here is a table with all of the data used for these charts/graphs (from this data you can also see that the liquidity of GeekGold has been increasing remarkably quickly of late). Here is the Excel file with all of the raw data.
Fun Fact #1: When you write those Game Reviews for 3 shiny new GeekGold, you're actually getting about 43 cents... which is a tad bit below the minimum wage. But then again, if you were to write something like, oh I don't know, say 608 reviews, then you might be able to net yourself 1,824 GeekGold, worth about $261.69.
Fun Fact #2: That Avatar, GeekBadge, UberGeekBadge, and 5 Microbadges, which cost you 205 GeekGold, actually cost you anywhere from $18.64 to $68.33, with an average cost of $29.41 (given the opportunity cost). But don't let this discourage you from tipping me.
Enjoy your geekgold and spend it wisely!
(See this Forum Thread for this article plus additional comments on it)