Money is power, literally.

[shilsen]

There's some dragon sourcebook where a dragon who amasses enough of a hoard can eat it all and ascend to demigodhood. Dragon Magic, maybe?

Draconomicon. The Dragon Ascendant PrC requires the dragon to eat its entire hoard to enter the PrC.

 

[Asmor]

In the case of land and such commodities, their value is directly related to how desirable they are. If there's lots of land, discovering new land doesn't help much. Kill the evil lich and win his floating tower? Cool! Except that his phylactery was also the stabilizing force which kept the tower aloft, and your brand new falling tower isn't worth a hill of beans.

Idea: Accumulated wealth only increases your power if you killed someone/something to acquire it. Thus, a king might not be very powerful, but KILL a king... and you, my friend, are like unto a god.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

There's some dragon sourcebook where a dragon who amasses enough of a hoard can eat it all and ascend to demigodhood. Dragon Magic, maybe?

It's also one of the steps in the Ceremony of Sublimation of OD&D dragons, whereby they gain HD and possibly Immortality at some point (in an article in Dragon Magazine by Bruce Heard, reprinted with permission at the Vaults of Pandius).