There's two boxes in front of you. One with $1 million. The other a 50/50 chance at $100 million

[FBaggins]

36. That's really a question of risk appetite

The true value of the chest is $50 million. That is... if you have billions of dollars to spend and could make the choice thousands of times... you would average $50 million per attempt.

Obviously, the price has to be below that since you only get a single attempt (you can't buy two options). The appropriate price depends a great deal on the purchaser's net worth and appetite for risk. $40 million for an asset that will either be worth nothing or $100M implies an immediate 25% average return, but also a large risk to capital. Whether that's too large a risk or a no-brainer decision depends on how big a deal the $40M price tag is for you. As you can see on the rest of the thread... for anyone who feels that a million dollars is life-changing... they aren't willing to take the risk.

But say it was instead a "special" at the roulette table today. There were no longer any green spaces and odd/even or red/black were true 50-50 propositions. To make things better... the casino is selling $5 chips for $4. If you barely had money for lunch, you might not play... but if you had $1,000 in your pocket that was "mad money"... you would play at that table all day long.

So it's a question of who is in the market. If there's a billionaire who doesn't mind taking risks... $40 million is probably low.