Mark Twain’s short story “The £1,000,000 Bank-Note” was published in 1893. Allowing for inflation, it would be like having at least twenty times that much money today. Although that isn’t the best example since it’s a goodly sum either way and doesn’t really change the impact of the story.
The standard Monopoly game’s fees and rents have remained unchanged since 1935. However, some recent special editions of the game have up-to-date amounts: the 2000 .com edition featured websites in the millions-of-dollars range, but the amounts were technically unchanged except for six extra zeroes (CBS Sportsline costs $60mil and Yahoo! costs $400mill, compared to Mediterranean’s $60 and Boardwalk’s $400). The 2007 Here and Now edition has similar markups, but with only four extra zeroes added to the end of each amount (Jacobs Field is $600,000, Times Square is $4,000,000).
In the original print of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” a newspaper cost only 1 Knut, but obviously since the original release, the price has gone up to 4 Knuts, so they update the story to account for inflation.
American editions certainly did do that. In my edition, he finds a dollar bill, and the two chocolate bars he purchases cost ten cents each. Interestingly, 1964 was just before they stopped making the dimes out of silver, and just before inflation really took off.
Just wanted to add also, that once in awhile the story of an old novel makes it impossible to update the currency or prices. A famous old time travel novel from th 1930s, Lest Darkness Fall has the protaganist inexplicably thrown back in time to 6th century Italy. Once he gets his bearings, he is able to exchange his modern Italian lire for sixth-century sesterces, because his fifty lire* of pocket change were still made mostly of silver and copper.
That plot point couldn’t work with modern currency.
*A lira at that time was worth about 10 U.S. cents; the character had four 10-lire pieces that were about like old fashioned silver dollars, and assorted other coins.
Even with advanced technology, is it still possible to build a bionic man for six million dollars?
Maybe. But they’re still gonna make him pay it back.
I’ve seen at least one book which tried to make a note about changes in currency. I think it was in And Both Were Young by Madeleine L’Engle. At the time that I picked up the book the “corrected” monetary numbers were almost as far off as those in the original text. And the attempt to clarify the point for more modern readers actually did more to interfere with willful suspension of disbelief than the original data.
If a story is firmly wedded to a particular time frame (And I believe most stories are. Look at how quickly contemporary mystery stories can age, sometime, for example.) it’s better to stick with the numbers that made sense at the time of the writing than trying to update them for a new edition of the book.
Mark Parisi did a cartoon about this- the only thing they can afford for six million dollars is a fingernail that is as strong as ten fingernails.
Six million dollars is just the amount of the co-pay.
I won’t zombify your other thread (rather hijack this one 
) but in “Dr. Seuss’s ABC” (written 6 years later) he appears to have completely forgotten this principle, if indeed it wasn’t complete accident
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I enter bills at Where’s George and I’d guess 80% of dollar bills are 2003 or 2003A now. Fives, tens, and twenties are more of a mixed bag as they last longer in circulation than a dollar’s 18 month average. Even at that, most of my singles entered are 1999 and 2001 series*. WG is a number-holic’s paradise. Stats are given on just about every conceivable parameter, denomination, series, issuing FRB bank, and year and month entered, just to name a few.
*The series’ year is when the plates were engraved, not necessarily when the bill was printed. 2003A is the latest series for singles and saw bucks, 2004A for ten-spots, and 2006 for 20s, 50s, and 100s.
I don’t know. The Great Train Robbery, 1963, was the biggest crime ever in the UK at the time, and netted £2.3 million, which was split between 15 gang members. Ronnie Biggs never had to work again, and lived the life of Riley in Brazil for decades, until a few years ago when he got ill and ran out of money.