Even in the book it's never really explained (technically, it doesn't drop the rings, it looks that way because of how the camera moves, but they're on the table before). You could interpret it as showing Eli's cluelessness about money, or as having some nifty supernatural properties (it's the only way it could really be worth that much).
share"Are you sort of. . . poor?"
Eli walked over to the table, picked up a box that looked like a black egg, and handed it to Oskar. He leaned over, held it under the lamp in order to see better.
The surface of the egg was rough and when Oskar looked more closely he saw hundreds of complex strands of gold thread. The egg was heavy, as if the whole thing was made of some kind of metal. Oskar turned it this way and that, looked at the gold threads embedded on the egg's surface. Eli stood next to Oskar. He smelled it again . . . the smell of rust.
"What's it worth, do you think?"
"Don't know. A lot?"
"There are only two of them in the world. If you had both of them you could sell them and buy yourself. . . a nuclear power plant, maybe."
"Nooo?. . ."
"Well, I don't know. What does a nuclear power plant cost? Fifty million?"
"I think it would cost. .. billions."
"Really? In that case I guess you couldn't."
"What would you do with a nuclear power plant?"
Eli laughed.
"Put it between your hands. Like this. Cup them. And then you let it roll back and forth."
Oskar did as Eli said. Rolled the egg gently back and forth in his cupped hands and felt the egg . . . crack, collapse between his palms. He gasped and removed the upper hand. The egg was now just a heap of hundreds . . . thousands of tiny slivers.
"Gosh, I'm sorry. I was careful, I-"
"Shhh. It's supposed to be like that. Make sure you don't drop any of it. Pour them out onto this."
Eli pointed to a piece of white paper on the table. Oskar held his breath as he gently let the glittering shards fall out of his hand. The individual pieces were smaller than drops of water and Oskar had to use his other hand to wipe his palm free of every last one.
"But it broke."
"Here. Look."
Eli pulled the lamp closer to the table, concentrated its dim light on the heap of metal slivers. Oskar leaned over and looked. One piece, no bigger than a tick, lay on its own to one side of the stack, and when he looked very closely he could see that it had indentations and notches on a few sides, almost microscopic light bulb-shaped protrusions on the other. He got it.
"It's a puzzle."
"Yes."
"But. . . can you put it together again?"
"I think so."
"It must take forever."
"Yes."
Death tugs at my ear & says: Live; I am coming.