If you could time travel to the past, you'd feel mightily rich, due to inflation. $100 would buy 200 multi-course fancy French dinners in NYC restaurants circa 1893 (source). But there's a catch: you obviously couldn't pay with modern currency. You'd be arrested on the spot as a counterfeiter!
One solution would be to bring along some gold. But an ounce currently costs $1,330, and would be worth only $20 in 1893 (source). So $100 worth of 1893 gold would cost you $6650 in current money, which means those 50¢ dinners would cost you $33 each. Not an awful deal, but hardly a steal - certainly not enticing enough to risk accidentally preventing the meeting of your great-great grandparents, or coming down with diphtheria, or being forced into a duel.
This is something I've puzzled over for years. There are obvious ways a time traveler might earn money in the past (though with substantial risk of meaningfully changing the course of history). But if you wanted to visit the past for just a few days, what would you bring along to pay for essentials, allowing you to enjoy those sweet old-timey prices?
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13 comments:
The base metal value would be low, but "perfectly" finished pieces of jewelry could be far more valuable, especially if they were crafted from cheap metals here.
Depending on the era, aluminum used to be one of the most expensive metals. Napoleon used aluminum cutlery while his staff was forced to make do with solid gold, for example.
High quality papers or inks designed to degrade perhaps? Could still be risky. Toilet paper was mentioned in at least one story that I recall. If its the near-past, for which we have good data, you'd only need enough for a stake to make some reliable bets on whatever the local sport is.
The problem is that commodities would take time and connections to monetize. Only in the cartoon version do I readily find a smelter who has cash on hand to cheerfully pay me $$$ for puzzlingly crappy-looking cutlery or whatever. And to whom, exactly, do I sell the toilet paper?
Jewelry might be a bit easier, but I can't imagine walking into a jewelry store and saying "here's a bunch of stuff that should be worth a ton but doesn't look like anything you've ever seen or have the heft and beauty of true quality." I could get $10-20, but it'd be a tough slog to raise $$$.
I've often thought about this. You'd need to do the jump back to 1893 in 5 or 6 stages. Go to a bank with the amount of cash you'll need in 1893. Tell them you're a collector, a history buff, a director of a play/film/TV show that needs period currency, whatever. They should be able to replace your cash with 20 or 30-year-old currency.
Now jump back 20-30 years and go to a bank with the same story. Repeat as often as necessary.
---Guy
...and in one of those jumps, go see Dom at DiFara in his early years.
Valid points all. If you're looking for something that would readily be accepted by any random merchant, you're probably out of luck. With some research though a single expedition involving working with a well-documented purchaser could fund many future trips to the same period.
Going for experiences instead of cash, if you could pass as a local then actually making book for a sporting event might work since you could offer creative enough odds to basically guarantee that you could pay out with the money received.
Hopping back a bit at a time is a cool idea too. Another option would be to sell far older fossils to a collector, again assuming that you could locate one.
Did you ever watch the series Journeyman? This was one of the plot points, he accidentally spends modern currency in the past.
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"Go to a bank with the amount of cash you'll need in 1893. Tell them you're a collector, a history buff, a director of a play/film/TV show that needs period currency, whatever. They should be able to replace your cash with 20 or 30-year-old currency. "
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What bank keeps 20 or 30 year old currency on hand? I've never heard of that. And you'd need to find a number of such establishments, one for each jump.
One of a bank's functions is to help "retire" old currency. They pull it from circulation and send it to the Fed for destruction. Spin a good yarn and they might exchange it for your new cabbage.
Or if you're charming enough you could ask them to look thru their teller drawers for older money.
Or not even a bank, go to a high-volume cash business. If you're a time traveler I assume you're interesting enough to get people to cooperate. Heck, tell them exactly what you're doing.
I bet if you had a week to do it, you could easily exchange $1000 in 2018 money for pre-1998 currency.
Richard, there are all sorts of ways to raise cash in the past if I wanted to make a career of it (and it'd be easier to make the bets than to make the book, I'd think). But that's a whole other thing. That's WORKING.
It seems like it should be easier, given the disproportionality of inflation, to simply go back and enjoy zillionaire freedom. The only thing stopping you is the damned currency dates. There's got to be an easy way.
OTOH this might actually represent a proof case of the abstract nature of currency. Inflation only happens in the abstract, which is where currency (even gold-backed currency) resides, as well. I'm not trained enough in economics to fully see/explain this, but I bet that's what's happening here.
Trampdad,
That won't work for several reasons.
The reason you so often see cheesy, unrealistic currency in film/tv is because no officiating authority will "lend" you money (of any sort), and if you produce fake currency with any degree of realism at all, you will likely be arrested, even though you'd appear to have a reasonable excuse. The Secret Service doesn't bend policy just 'cuz you have a reasonable excuse. This is a "thing" for Hollywood types, even for current currency.
By the exact same reasoning, retired currency is NEVER going to be released to help you make your film or show (much less your bullshitted-about film or show). The people who protect that stuff, and the rules by which they operate, are neither chummy nor forgiving.
I think you're missing my point. It has nothing to do with counterfeit currency.
I maintain that someone with sufficient creativity would be able to exchange current (real, not fake) money for currency 20-30 years older without having to pay a penalty.
There is still plenty of old folding money in circulation.
---Guy
The entities that remove old currency from circulation will not lend it out (or exchange it for current currency) so you can make your huge Hollywood film, much less your concocted Hollywood film.
Then don't use the Hollywood angle.
If you're smart enough to figure out time travel, you can figure out how to get people to trade some old, tired bills for your new crisp money at 1-to-1.
Heck, I'm thinking this is a good idea for a vlog...
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