[duttish]

I'll throw the British South Sea Trading Company into the ring for that title of most overvalued company ever.

It had the king himself on the board. The company value represented a decent fraction of the national gdp at the time. All without actually never producing anything of actual value. It was just bribes and speculation all the way through. It's wild.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sea_Company

Extra History did a more easily digestible series, which was how I learned about it in the first place. https://youtu.be/k1kndKWJKB8

[saagarjha]

Unrelated question: did we have a good enough idea of the world map in 1711 for the coat of arms shown on Wikipedia to be accurate?

[aetherson]

No, and the article shows a not-even-attempting-accuracy period version of the coat of arms a little below: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SouthSeaCompany_TradeLabe...

[petesergeant]

> The company value represented a decent fraction of the national gdp at the time.

The company's market-cap was almost 3 times national GDP

[maratc]

We should stop comparing incomparable things, like companies market cap (measured in dollars or pounds) to national GDPs (measured in dollars or pounds per year,) unless we want to reach outrageous but incorrect conclusions.

[duttish]

Oh wow, thanks. I misremembered, thought it was like 1/3 and didn't have time to look it up again.