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Financing wars has always been lucrative, and remains lucrative to this day.

unless you sell guns of course

so the richest families in Florence in 1427 were the 0.001 percent? At any rate it seemed to have worked for them.

Its called survivor bias :)

so you're saying that there are a number of formerly rich families at the time who have not made it to the present with wealth intact? I guess that seems reasonable, but don't have any data yet. On the other hand there should still be some wealth today that was not among the wealthiest then?

(of course I wonder how much of that maintaining wealth was - instead of gold, art, and land - strategic marriage)

Certainly there are a good number of formerly rich, now poor or extinct families. It's practically a cliché of nobility.

yes, it seems likely, even 'certain' but as I understand it also seems not to have been verified using data in this case? I like my certainties verified.