This has been a fun thread. I’m glad to know that jewels will be the way to go once I plan to time travel to the early 20th century. And stocking up on z-packs…brilliant!
For those who plan on bringing back mint condition comics and/or baseball cards to make a huge profit, won’t you have the problem that the mint condition antiques aren’t going to be “old” enough to be certified as authentic once you return to the present?
Sure, your Honus Wagner cigarette card will look like an exact replica of the original, but it will only be a few months, and not 100 years, old. (I see one poster has the good idea to hide it somewhere, so it can be re-discovered a century later. That is a good idea, as long as your hidey hole isn’t demolished or moved for 100 years).
[QUOTE=md2000]
The “if you spent $10,000 on this company” thing makes me wonder - what was market capitalization back then? Would $10,000 on some of these lesser companies have distorted the market? Was Target a million-dollar or more company in 1915 - since maybe more than 1% purchase would distort the market? After all, a million dollars (Think Doctor Evil) was a lot of money back then. Plus, when did they start to take off? A lot of the boom, I think, was post-WWII.
[/QUOTE]
I can’t see how investing in the companies in my first cite in this thread would distort the market enough to make any sort of difference. But you could set things up to make several small, incremental investments over time. If you scroll back I had a cite for 10 companies that were formed in the late 19th century and have done very well from that time to today.
Not sure I get this. My plan was to hire a law firm to create a trust, and then hire an investment firm (based on longevity and known trust…there are at least 5 firms I can think of who have been around and have good reps for that long). You would basically set up the trust, set up the instructions and then as you jump forward in time you’d show up from time to time to tweak things or whatever. And don’t forget to designate me as the heir way up in 2015.
All of this would be (should be) totally legit. You’d have the trust paying taxes, taking their cut and managing your instructions and will, and overseeing the investment firm. Over that time period you’d make a huge amount of money, far outstripping any number of baseball cards (btw, I think the plan there WAS to put them in a safe place…maybe a safe deposit box in a bank you know existed continuously between 1915 and today, something there are many banks have done), gems, or other schemes. Jumping incrementally back up through time simply gives you the opportunity to tweak things, and use that money to buy really cool stuff and sock it away for when you get back to our time. I’d have a lot of money AND one of the coolest car collections and collection of exclusive properties in the world after this.
But this does not appear to be what the OP is asking about. You go back to 1915. And live there. Setting up a trust that pays off in 2015 doesnt do you much good as you are dead.
We have had dozens and dozens of threads about how to make money by going back in time, doing xxxx and spending it today. It’s been done to death. What I (and I think the OP is interested in) is going back to 1915 and staying there. This is a fresh and interesting take.
A Honus Wagner BBC wouldnt help much as there were very few and they werent worth much until fairly recently (I think a couple hundred bucks preWWII) .
Counterfeiting and building trans-dimensional time-traveling spaceships are entirely different skill sets!
Good hiding places would seem to be one of the most important assets of the intrepid time traveler!
All good points. You’d either want to be extremely well protected or extremely discreet as to how you went about your business, and probably both. Some things just can’t be kept secret. No way you can keep picking all the winning stocks without it getting noticed, and in fact so many hopping on the same bandwagon that it fatally distorts the market. You’d probably have to learn to be content with a few judicious purchases and leave it at that. Kind of reminds me of British intelligence operations during both world wars. They knew a lot of things that they couldn’t act on so as not to reveal how they knew them.
[QUOTE=DrDeth]
But this does not appear to be what the OP is asking about. You go back to 1915. And live there. Setting up a trust that pays off in 2015 doesnt do you much good as you are dead.
[/QUOTE]
I thought we moved past that, but in that case buying baseball cards doesn’t work either. I’d still go with converting my money today into 1914/15 currency and invest (recall we are talking about the period just before the high growth era of the 20’s before the crash, so you could still make a fortune with a fairly moderate investment…and $50k in 1915 currency was actually quite a bit of money). But I guess if I had to live then as well (assuming I didn’t have a choice on this trip, since I’d only do it if it was 2 way…no way I’d want to live in 1915), I’d take information with me as well. Engine designs, weapons designs, manufacturing designs, chemical formulas for drugs and perhaps starter cultures and processes, scientific breakthroughs and other blueprints I could use, once I have a good nest egg going to buy a strategic company or two to produce all manner of things within the tech capability of the time.
Like I said, I think my plan will still work, assuming I don’t die of the flu in 1918. I have a good 20-30 years of life left in me at this point, and in that time my initial investments will certainly pay off…even better than if I simply left instructions, since I KNOW what’s going to happen, broadly, in history between now and then. For instance, I know there will be a war that the US will join, and I know which companies will get contracts for that (I’m too old to be drafted, so shouldn’t be an issue). I’m thinking that once things got rolling money wise I could start real estate investment as well, just to round things out. Again, we all know where real estate is going to boom between 1915 and, say, the 1930s (which is my own expectation of life…some of you might do better, assuming again you don’t die from one of the myriad diseases in that time)…or if you don’t, a bit of research should find that info for you pretty easily. And as some noted, you COULD take a laptop or tablet back with you, though you’d need to take the plans to do a DC to AC conversion and perhaps build a generator (one of the things I’d like to do is perhaps talk to someone like Tesla and convince him not to give away his stake in GE, but instead to stand pat since AC is going to win in the end, big guy :p).
[QUOTE=wolfpup]
All good points. You’d either want to be extremely well protected or extremely discreet as to how you went about your business, and probably both. Some things just can’t be kept secret. No way you can keep picking all the winning stocks without it getting noticed, and in fact so many hopping on the same bandwagon that it fatally distorts the market. You’d probably have to learn to be content with a few judicious purchases and leave it at that. Kind of reminds me of British intelligence operations during both world wars. They knew a lot of things that they couldn’t act on so as not to reveal how they knew them.
[/QUOTE]
I’d present myself as an immigrant to establish myself and give myself documentation. You could probably gin up something in this time that would pass muster then, regardless, so I don’t think that would be an issue. As to having to be judicious, I guess I’m not seeing it. There are several wealthy families who basically made their fortune in that same time period by basically picking the right investments. The Kennedy’s for instance come to mind (and old Joe DID do illegal shit and still got away with it). None of us here are talking about going back with millions of dollars to invest. But consider what a nest egg of, say, $50,000 in that times money could get you. It’s not going to alarm anyone or set any trends…there were plenty of millionaires back then, after all, and to them $50k wasn’t THAT much that it would alarm anyone. If you started to do better, well, you have a track record. What’s the FBI going to say? They can investigate me to their little hearts content…they won’t find any evidence of insider trading, which would be the only thing they COULD get you on. What are they going to do, accuse me of being from 2015?
If I was going back in time to 1915 to build a time capsule to be opened now in 2015,
what would be the best items to be place in it for maximum value? baseball cards?
comic books? coins? stamps?
I suppose it would be necessary to put items of nonvalue in it to throw off suspicions.
Gold. Simplest.
Depending on the quality of storage conditions, a Van Gogh or Monet or something.
How do stock certificates work? I imagine that everything has been electronic for decades, or at least registered. There was probably a deadline for turning in your 1915 IBM certificates? A good trust management firm would be preferred there - which eventually might come to the attention of the IRS and FBI. (They’d check to see if it was a communist sleeper cell financing process, then money laundering… When you showed up to claim it today, you’d have a thousand questions to answer.)
My point about picking winners to live in 1915 - a lot of the surge in value in many firms was likely in the 1950’s post-war boom, the tech booms of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. What would be guaranteed to double every few years from 1915 to 1930? At least you could make a killing selling early in 1929.
I thought this was a very interesting question. I did some research on the issue and discovered that opium can be purchased for as low as ~$29/kg. In the 1880-1890s, it would sell for $1500-$1800 per 60 kg. So $25-30 per kg, with the higher prices for premium product. Presumably modern opium would be at least as good as the premium product of the day.
So worst case scenario, you might take a small loss. You’re quite likely to break even and since opium had become illegal in the US by 1915 you might even make a profit. If you don’t mind being an time travelling drug dealer.
If you kill your grandfather before you were conceived you won’t exist. If you don’t exist you can’t go back in time and kill your grandfather. If you can’t go back in time and kill your grandfather you now exist. But if you exist you can’t kill your grandfather because if you do the future you will cease to exist and won’t be able to go back in time and kill your grandfather so now your grandfather isn’t killed and you still exist. So you can’t go back in time and kill your grandfather because if you kill your grandfather before you were conceived you won’t exist. If you don’t exist you can’t go back in time and kill your grandfather. If you can’t go back in time and kill your grandfather you now exist. But if you exist you can’t kill your grandfather because if you do the future you will cease to exist and won’t be able to go back in time and kill your grandfather so now your grandfather isn’t killed and you still exist. So you can’t go back in time and kill your grandfather because if you kill your grandfather before you were conceived you won’t exist. If you don’t exist you can’t go back in time and kill your grandfather. If you can’t go back in time and kill your grandfather you now exist. But if you exist you can’t kill your grandfather because if you do the future you will cease to exist and won’t be able to go back in time and kill your grandfather so now your grandfather isn’t killed and you still exist. And you can’t send someone else back in time to kill your grandfather because if you do you’ll never have been born and thus never be able to send someone back in time to kill your grandfather.
Is there any limit to what you can take back with you?
What if you were to take back something that would let you win skill tests or competitions?
What about a technology that would let you make a living as a psychic / fortune teller? (think something like “bugging” a room?)
What about a spy camera that gave you the inside track to winning poker games?
Or if you wanted to go the casino route - how about using a laser range finder to win at roulette? Someone on a hot run could take reasonable sums to live comfortably with little suspicion.
Could you use some form of laser / infrared targeting system to set yourself up a “sideshow” business with your prowess at blindfolded target shooting? At least for long enough to get yourself a good nest-egg for ongoing bets?
How about as a magician? Is there something that you could take back that would let you have a good career as a “one trick wonder” even though you had limited skill?
I’m thinking that you wouldn’t need a lot - once you have a stake of $30-$40k, even “average” performance on the stock market is going to be a pretty decent life (using a market timing strategy with major stock events)
