Time Travelers: How Would You Get Your Money?

If you're going back to certain times you might try other metals as bullion. For example, aluminum used to be quite valuable. And before the silver strikes in the western US, silver was a higher percentage value of gold.

Simple answer: scan old notes, print them, and pass them off. The technology we have today would have been mind-boggling to people back then and the copies made in such a way would easily fool them, because they would simply be that good.

Just don't get caught, though, because penalties back then were much more severe than currently in effect.

I can recall two instances of a time traveller taking care of the money issue.

In Richard Matheson's Bid Time Return, the main character actually buys old money from a coin dealer, an 1886 'Tombstone' 10-dollar bill picturing Thomas A. Hendricks.

In an first season episode of The Twilight Zone entitled "Walking Distance", the main character walks down a road to his old hometown, and finds himself back in time to when he was a child. At one point, he comes face to face with his father who notes that the bills in his wallet "haven't been printed yet".

An alternate reality is found by the main character in Jack Finney's novella, The Woodrow Wilson Dime.

Don't forget to adjust for inflation, or in this case deflation.

Inflation Calculator


In other words, one U.S. Dollar in 1850 had the purchasing power of
$25.58 of 2008 U.S. Dollars.

You would still lose value on gold bullion. $20.47/oz. (1850) times
$25.58 yields a 2008 Dollar value of $523.62/oz., and Gold spot price
today is $1123.60 (meaning that Gold is double its 1850 value, or in
1850 Gold was half its 2008 value, even after adjusting for
Dollar inflation!)

Silver, you're better off. 89¢/oz. (1850) becomes $22.77/oz. in 2008
Dollars, and today's spot silver is $17.62, only 77% of the 1850 value,
after adjusting for inflation.

I don't know what aluminum went for in 1850, but it was obviously a
multiple factor of the 2008 value (after inflation adjustment), and
if your time machine has a 'mass limit', aluminum is a lot lighter
than gold or silver.

Obviously we could make counterfeit notes today that would have
'passed' back then, but if we're talking the late 1800's and early
1900's, you could buy circulated Gold Certificates from that period
that cost much less in today's Dollars than the bullion value of the
coins that you could exchange them for at the time.

Buy something like a common circulated $20 Gold Certificate for $200
today, then when you're back in its time period, you'd have $500+ in
equivalent to 2008 Dollar purchasing power. Even better, cash them in
at the bank for Double Eagles, then bring them back and each one has
over $1000 of current bullion value (and you might even get a key
date or semi-key back then, if you were lucky!)

Before I left, I would go into my collection today, pull out all of my money from that time period. That would be my seed money. Then I would go on to the internet and start looking up historical scores of sporting events, stock prices, and coin prices. I would go back and use my information to make some money. I would then invest most of it in stocks. Before I came home, I'd take the last of my money to the bank and find some nice examples to replace my collection when I got home. (Not that I've thought this ridicules idea through though).

I would not take anything valuable or perceived as valuable with me. I'd simply go back to the California gold fields (1846), and get all the nuggets out of the streams and rivers I can find. Before the miners arrive :-)

you should talk to Dr. Emmett brown! He had a briefcase full of money in the 2nd one for different years

Ah, as long as ethics are out the window, howse 'bout we just go back and zap some well-heeled drunk with our paralysis ray? Or a whole poker game!?