All you need are some beads and you could buy Manhattan.
It only takes a quid on four 33/1 shots to make 1.2 million. I doubt that would break the space/time continuum. Your main problem would be finding a bookmaker who could afford to pay you out.
Hang on, I’ve got a time machine. I only need to go back to the nearest bank holiday weekend and place my bet with one of the big bookies.
I read this as “beards,” which would have been an interesting explanation to hear.
Yes, but how many 33/1 shots can you find who won? IMO if you’re going to gamble, you might as well just take a single winning lottery number for a record (at the time) unclaimed jackpot, then travel to the night of the drawing.
(highlighting mine)
Best Freudian slip of the week!
Small uncut synthetic rubies to Herculaneum, if your Latin is up to it. Be sure to not be there in 79 AD. Buy some nice pottery, and some nice clothes. Put the spare change into one of the pots.
Tulip bulbs to London January of 1637, buy a dozen for a buck each, sell them for 150 Pounds each. Buy some nice clothes.
Melt down some aluminum scraps, sell the lumps to the Royal Society, in London, about 1830 or so. Buy some nice clothes.
In every case, accept only silver and gold coins of recognizable mintage. Don’t bother exchanging them.
Stop off in London again, in 1910, and buy two small strong travelers trunks. Sell your pottery, and your oldest coins to an antique dealer to finance it. Buy nice clothes, pack them all into one chest, along with all your coins. Ship the other chest on a ship you know is going to be lost, and not be recovered. Mail your receipt to yourself in America on a ship you know is going to make it.
Go to America, a month or two later, pick up your mail. Find a bank that won’t fail and pay them to keep the letter for 110 years. Bury the chest in the desert, by going there in 2010, Pick a lonely spot, check the GPS, then go back to 1910, take out half the clothes, and coins, and bury it. Back to 2010, and get your chest, containing your antique coins and clothes.
Now you have antique coins, and a nice chest to sell, a letter verifying its authenticity, and Clothes that fit you and are in style in the past, along with new money good in the past.
Tris
You underestimate chaos theory as do most people who think up time travel scenarios. The OP excluded an alternate history scenario once he returns but alternate history also starts to happen once you get there in the first place and gets more pronounced over time. That is widely known as the “butterfly effect”. You could trigger something crooked by influencing the odds or you just could bat a fly away causing it to land on a given horses nose 5 minutes before the race starts causing a chain reaction that sets up a collision on the track making even your short-term predictions nearly useless from that point forward. I am mostly talking about sticking around for a few weeks or months and betting on multiple competitions but it starts from the point of arrival and spreads from there.
The route that you drove to work today and the groceries you bought this week altered history and influenced what the world will be like in 50 years including who lives and who dies. There is no escaping it.
Get a dime from 1938 (you might even have one already), go back, buy an issue of Action #1. Profit.
Get a few ounces of gold and melt it into an unremarkable lump. Jump back to the end of the civil war and get scammed into trading it for a few trunks of confederate money. Take the money back to the beginning of the civil war and buy precious metals and jewelry. Bury the loot on your property so it ages properly and jump back to the current time to make the discovery of a lifetime while doing some landscaping.
Dicey, schmicey. Bring back all the bouillon you can carry.
People in the past loved soup.
But, what if we go with the theory that nature has to always be consistent, so you couldn’t change the past even if you tried? The only way the OP could make his millions if the OP did, in fact, make his millions.
Bring back Cubic Zirconium 1/10ct gems, sell as diamonds.
Go to Costco. buy as many varieties of uncracked peppercorns as you wish. A couple of those large-ish 20 oz bottles should be sufficient. Travel back to medieval Europe, and have an awesome vacation. Bring back souvenirs!
Triskadecamus, great plan, but at what point do you send the GPS satellites back in time?
I knew someone would miss that. You check GPS in 2010, don’t move physically, and go to 1910. Bury stuff. Return to 2010, check GPS.
Tris
Wouldn’t it be easier to buy a property with a house on it that was built in, say, 1910, then go back to just beforehand and bury your strongbox under the soon-be-built house?
Better yet, while you’re thinking about buying the house, walk around with a metal detector to make sure the strongbox you will/have buried is there before you make the purchase. At least you’ll know when you demolish the house that it will be worth it.
How do you check your GPS again in 1910?
Is that sentence actually that hard to parse?
It’s 2010. I got out in the desert without leaving the current time. I check my GPS.
I travel back to 1910, noting that my position seems unchanged visually, out here in the empty desert. If I don’t move around on the earth during the trip through time, I bury the chest, and then return to 2010, again checking my GPS as I arrive, to be sure that the trip has not changed my location. A century of time has, in all likelihood made my hole undetectable. But I am still here, so I dig.
See? Never checked the GPS in 1910. If my shit is gone, I can go back to 1910, starting from the same place, and dig it up in 1910. Come back to 2010, try another place, and repeat the procedure. I figured it would work the first time, but hey, why not be careful.
Tris
Ah, we’re stipulating that all time shifts will leave you at the same position relative to the Earth’s surface?
Or that you can target spatial coordinates as well as temporal.
At least for Trisk’s plan.