If you’ve ever wondered what a million pounds (£1,000,000) looks like this post may help. Unfortunately I don’t have a million pounds, but I do have one single twenty pound note. Here it is:
I also have a ruler, a calculator, and a copy of Paint Shop Pro. I’m therefore going to create a million pounds out of £20 notes. To do this I need to know the dimensions of the £20 bank note. Each one is 149x80mm with a thickness of 0.113mm. A stack of 100 notes with a value of £2000 will therefore be just 11.3mm high. Or 1.13cm if you prefer.
Here is £2000 with some mystery legs to give you a sense of scale.
Of course your £2000 stack will only look like this if you use fresh new banknotes straight off the printing press. If you build the stack out of used banknotes it won’t look so neat because of all the crinkles and folds.
What does one hundred thousand pounds look like?
Next what might one hundred thousand pounds (£100,000) look like? A bit like this photo, 9 stacks, each with a bit over eleven thousand pounds in it. A nice block of money I’m sure you’ll agree.
What does one million pounds look like?
So what does a million pounds look like? I’ve built my million pounds out of 25 blocks of £40,000. Each of these blocks is 22.6cm high. So my million is about 45.2cm high with a single block of £40,000 at the front. One million is made of 50,000 £20 notes.
What if instead of being in a big block, all the notes were in a single pile? If that were done we’d have a stack of notes 5.65m high. To put that in perspective I put the stack next to a London double-decker bus. You can see that one million is a bit higher than a bus.
There are a few more all important questions to answer.
Would one million pounds fit in a brief case?
If we imagine a film or crime drama where the villain brings a brief case full of bank notes to a meeting how much would fit in there? If it is filled with £20 notes then we could fit about £100,000 in a brief case.
If we are dealing with £50 notes then we could fit about £250,000 in a slightly bigger brief case.
As for bringing a million pounds in a brief case – it isn’t going to work.
Would one million pounds fit in a suit case?
With a suitcase you can transport much more serious money. You can definitely fit a million in a suitcase using £20 notes. And using £50 notes you can easily lug two million pounds around.
What would one million pounds weigh?
One million pounds using £20 notes would weigh about 50kg! You’d have to be pretty strong to be able to carry it. If you put it in a suitcase and tried to check it on to an aircraft you’d be racking up some serious excess baggage charges. Luckily you’d have to cash on hand to pay for it!
Using £50 notes your million would weigh about 22kg. This would almost fit into your usual 20kg airline allowance. And if you put some of the notes in your hand luggage you’d completely escape any excess baggage charge.
If we go back to the suitcase example £100,000 of £20 bank notes in a briefcase would weigh about 5kg. If you add in the weight of the briefcase you still have a fairly portable brief case of cash.
What are the bank note dimensions?
£20 – A twenty pound note is about 149x80mm, 0.113mm thick. About 1g in weight.
£50 – A fifty pound note is about 156x85mm, 0.113mm thick. And about 1.1g in weight.