I can get you a million dollars more than the Powerball Jackpot.
Do the jackpot plan, but before you do it, talk with James Randi.
Daniel
Ignoring the lottery ticket scenario which is really the best way, why not leave past you instructions on how to build the machine. He may not have the burning desire, but he will want to ensure that he gets wealthy. This way he doesn’t have to develop the technology, he just has to follow directions.
Brilliant!
This could work, if you trust yourself. Arm yourself with a list of the highest grossing stocks of the past five years, including all of information on how to best exploit this. Go back to the week before the biggest Powerball Jackpot in history (at the time) was won by that bozo who has since been robbed several times, had his niece die on his property, etc. Leave yourself a note with something from the future that will make you believe yourself. In the note give yourself instructions on how to reinvest the earnings. This way you can make lots of money, plus invest and earn even more.
Even more fun, you can tell yourself stuff like who will win the 2004 election. Taunt your Democrat friends. Win booze. Get an invite to the inaugural. Whatever. It will work like a dream. Trust me on this.
Randi would only hand out the million for a controlled and repeatable result. Bricker’s flimsy time machine will not allow for repetition.
Heh. Maybe the Republicans won’t end up losing Congressional seats this year.
Bricker must really have a time machine. I remember this happening! :eek:
Do a 15 minute photo-interview with Corporal Hitler. Steal some of his stuff.
Obviously you should go to the bottom of the Marianas Trench.
Dammit! MEBuckner got there first with my smart-ass comment.
Okay, try this.
A) Buy stock in buggy whips.
B) Go back and kill Henry Ford before he builds Model T.
I so hate you for getting here first…
Figure out THE automobile that appreciated the most. Do some research on what dealerships sold them. Figure out how much in gold it would take to buy the thing and aquire that gold for your trip. Go to the dealership, walk in, slap down the gold and say you want that car. Bring it back with you. You will have plenty of money.
Really though the easiest thing is simply to find the lottery with the biggest pay off that wasn’t collected (again, research) the day before, plop yourself down the day before at a 7-11 somewhere and buy a slurpee and a ticket with the winning number, come back and turn in the ticket and collect the cash. Simple. 
-XT
What if the time machine’s flaw was that it could only send you back exactly 50 years, for a week?
If you had to time get paper stock certificates or bonds, wouldn’t those be usuable in the present day?
You could get yourself a Honus Wagner baseball card, maybe a few others (a Cy Young rookie perhaps). Put em in your pocket, and then “find them” in mint condition when you get back.
You could make almost 1.3 million if you knew where to intercept one of the four cards printed.
Sure they would – stock certificates are good as long as the company is in existance.
One question, before I give a response:
How much room is there inside the time machine, for the transportation of material?
Get enough old currency to live on for a week, plus enough to buy some collectibles. Cache the collectibles and dig them up when you return.
The problem with bringing stuff back in the machine is that it wouldn’t age, and might therefore appear to be fake when you try to sell it.
It’s going to be tough to beat lottery money. Here’s something a bit lower profile(because you’re wanting to keep under the radar as you work on your time machine v2.0).
In the summer of 1994, two places in the world received shipments of Magic: the Gathering cards from a new print run. The run was recalled and destroyed due to numerous printing and typesetting errors. According to the company only “a few cases”(a case is six boxes of 36 packs each) made it into circulation. My personal estimate is eight cases. Let’s say you landed on the doorstep of the shop which just received four of them. The retail value of these boxes at the time was ~$120 per box. Four cases would run you 24 X $120 or $2,880. Today a single pack of this print run, unopened, sells for ~$2,000. Approximate resale value of these cards at today’s prices. $2,000 X 36 X 24 = $1,728,000. In a world with an altered timeline where only half of these cards made it into circulation the per-pack prices may well be even higher.
If you’re willing to crack the packs and itemize and sell them you could net much higher profits. A single basic land(the most common of all the types of cards) sells for over $20 and the extreme misprints sell for ~$6,500 each. In a case you would probably have ~170 of the most sought-after misprint(which was a common card, I’d expect one in every 5 packs on average) so if you cracked the packs you could sell the “blue hurricanes” for ~$6,500 X 170 = $1,105,000 in Hurricanes alone. Browsing a few pages of completed eBay listings for this card set I haven’t seen ANY cards going for less than $20 each. You, after filtering out your Hurricanes, have 15 X 36 X 24 - 170 = 12,790 cards left, many, MANY, of which sell for $200 or more, but let’s lowball it at $100 each. This nets you another $1,279,000.
So for ~3k investment, you’ve got ~2.3 million, or a return percentage of 766%. Nowhere near lottery, of course, but easier to use to keep below the radar and you can sell it off a bit at a time to finance ongoing operations without taking huge tax hits.
Enjoy,
Steven
Lottery is certainly the best idea…and if you aren’t greedy, can I give you my phone number and you can call me (collect is fine) with the correct lottery numbers for a lottery that you aren’t going to play so I can win that one? As a thank you, I’ll fly you to Las Vegas and buy you dinner at Picasso in The Bellagio.
Oh, and tell me I don’t have to waste my time and watch the new tv show, HEIST.