# You can time travel and bring back a backpack - most valuable contents? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 19, 2010, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-time-travel-and-bring-back-a-backpack-most-valuable-contents/561166 "2010-11-19T01:00:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/intergalactic_gladiator/32/112_2.png) [@Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Intergalactic_Gladiator)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2010, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-time-travel-and-bring-back-a-backpack-most-valuable-contents/561166/41 "2010-11-19T23:26:31Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > Does this time travel thing involve going through one of them nekid scanners or getting my junk groped? If so, I’ll pass. If so, I’m in! ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2010, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-time-travel-and-bring-back-a-backpack-most-valuable-contents/561166/42 "2010-11-19T23:29:40Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Yes, and apparently the US Treasury woudl think them stolen, and they’d have to be, since they were never circulated, so 1933 double eagles are right out per the OP. > > In pretty much all case, any really rare coin would be very difficult for a time traveler to procure in just 3 hours. Pretty much, you’d have to accept more or less common coins in circulation at that time. So really rare coins are out, although certainly some of the 20 Half-eagles would have a nice collectors premium. Still, maybe that would bring us to $20-$50K. Unfortunately because of this rule > [@](#): > > You have exactly the\*\* monetary ewuivalent of today’s $100\*\* to spend, in whatever authentic denomination exists for that period. all gold coins would be out. What you’d have to spend would be about one dollar. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2010, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-time-travel-and-bring-back-a-backpack-most-valuable-contents/561166/43 "2010-11-19T23:34:18Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > I’d go back and get a Gutenberg Bible. If I could sell it, it would be for tens of millions. If I can’t sell it, hey, I’d still have a Gutenberg Bible. Where are you planning on storing it in the intervening centuries so that it is aged properly, and thus authentic? If you cannot get it hidden away back then and retrieve it in modern times, it’s just a very clever forgery. Thinking of Western Europe only, there would be few institutions going back even 300 years ago or so with stability and longevity enough to retain a package for a modern day visitor to collect (the collect bit being I guess the tricky bit) , much less back to Gutenberg. I’d probably go to 1700 or so, and see what I could pick up cheaply of Newton’s original writings or whatever I could find from the other early Royal Society folk, or perhaps even a first folio if I got lucky, and open a deposit box in perpetuity with Coutts, with a complex message required in order to gain access, no matter how far in the future. I’m not sure that a 100 dollar equivalent would be enough though. ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2010, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-time-travel-and-bring-back-a-backpack-most-valuable-contents/561166/44 "2010-11-20T00:48:11Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > I figure your best bet is collecting something that just doesn’t exist any more, like Dodo DNA I can go wherever I want, right? I’ll just go to Mauritius, and bring back a live male and female dodo. Time period, around 1620, right when some European sailors have arrived. I can probably catch the birds myself, so I’ll just trade the $100 for whatever coins (in good condition) they have in their pockets, the coins should be worth _something_ to a collector. ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2010, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-time-travel-and-bring-back-a-backpack-most-valuable-contents/561166/45 "2010-11-20T00:54:10Z")
Wait a minute… Go back to the manger in Bethlehem, and bring back Baby Jesus! Become his agent, and have him write his memoirs. Are we assuming that we can convince people that we have actually travelled in time and brought an original item? Another idea - bring back a backpack with a smartphone from 2060, and sell it to the highest bidder: Google, Microsoft, or Apple ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2010, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-time-travel-and-bring-back-a-backpack-most-valuable-contents/561166/46 "2010-11-20T01:05:09Z")
You could also go back and bump someone off, say, like JK Rowling, then come back and “write” the Harry Potter books yourself. ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2010, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-time-travel-and-bring-back-a-backpack-most-valuable-contents/561166/47 "2010-11-20T01:17:29Z")
> [@Arnold\_Winkelried](#): > > Are we assuming that we can convince people that we have actually travelled in time and brought an original item? Our goal was not so much that you travelled in time, but that you could go buy a backpack worth of stuff off the street in the past and make the most bang for your buck in the present. So when selling the item(s) today you would say “I found this in my Grandfather’s house” or “this has been in my family forever, I didn’t know it was valuable.” > [@Siam Sam](#): > > You could also go back and bump someone off, say, like JK Rowling, then come back and “write” the Harry Potter books yourself. That is without question my favorite one so far. The backpack would be exempt from the rules of time, so take a copy of the books back with you in the pack so they don’t vanish **Back To The Future** style. ---
**Author:** ![Quasimodem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/e274bd/32.png) [@Quasimodem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quasimodem)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2010, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-time-travel-and-bring-back-a-backpack-most-valuable-contents/561166/48 "2010-11-20T01:35:54Z")
> [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](#): > > I’d go bus the table from the Last Supper. I’d have the Holy Grail _and_ the Holy Silverware. :D:D:D:D:D THIS is my favorite one! I’d also like some of A. Einstein’s notes, as well as a translation of that gobblydegook that guy Nosferatu wrote in his so-called prophesies. Q ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2010, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-time-travel-and-bring-back-a-backpack-most-valuable-contents/561166/49 "2010-11-20T01:44:17Z")
> [@Baron\_Greenback](#): > > Where are you planning on storing it in the intervening centuries so that it is aged properly, and thus authentic? If you cannot get it hidden away back then and retrieve it in modern times, it’s just a very clever forgery. Yes, but I’d know it was genuine, and a very clever forgery that only cost me $100 would be good enough aesthetically to put it on a nice stand in my library. Ditto with a Shakespeare first folio, a painting by Rembrandt or that little ditty I bought from Mozart. ---
**Author:** ![Quasimodem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/e274bd/32.png) [@Quasimodem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quasimodem)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2010, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-time-travel-and-bring-back-a-backpack-most-valuable-contents/561166/50 "2010-11-20T01:57:04Z")
**Look** into the backpack. **Find** what you think is interesting and would sell, and then _memorize_ it. When you get back to the present, you’ll go “What the FUCK???” and throw it out. You can’t win with time travel. Not yet. Wait till they get the worm hole figured out and then how to travel faster than the speed of light (or a fart). Oh hell, I _know_ you know all this, **Morbo** , and I don’t mean to make fun. I also want to believe in time travel - more than you know! So please excuse me if you thought I was making fun of your post - I wasn’t. So I’ll go back to my original: _memorize_ and then somehow hold on to it. Q ---
**Author:** ![gazpacho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6f9a4e/32.png) [@gazpacho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gazpacho)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2010, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-time-travel-and-bring-back-a-backpack-most-valuable-contents/561166/51 "2010-11-20T02:06:12Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > You could also go back and bump someone off, say, like JK Rowling, then come back and “write” the Harry Potter books yourself. I wonder how well that would work? Specifically how hard would it be to convince someone to publish them and once you did would they become the huge hit that they did? Pop culture seems so random. There are tons of good books out there that for once reason or another just don’t make it. It would suck to go back time and things just don’t work out. ---
**Author:** ![postcards](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8e8cbc/32.png) [@postcards](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/postcards)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2010, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-time-travel-and-bring-back-a-backpack-most-valuable-contents/561166/52 "2010-11-20T02:16:01Z")
> [@PlainJain](#): > > I’d think 100 dollars of stock in Google, MS, ILM, US Steel, etc would be worth quite a bit by now. Microsoft’s IPO in 1986 was $21 per share, Google’s in 2004 was $85. As was noted upthread, $100 in today’s money is less than in the past. $100 from today would be worth about $88 in 2004, so you get one share of Google. $100 from today would be worth about $52 in 1986, so you get three shares of Microsoft. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2010, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-time-travel-and-bring-back-a-backpack-most-valuable-contents/561166/53 "2010-11-20T02:30:02Z")
> [@gazpacho](#): > > I wonder how well that would work? Specifically how hard would it be to convince someone to publish them and once you did would they become the huge hit that they did? Pop culture seems so random. There are tons of good books out there that for once reason or another just don’t make it. It would suck to go back time and things just don’t work out. I think something like Harry Potter would be a sure thing. You could even pitch it to the same publisher. If you’ve lived all your life in Topeka, Kansas and never left it, you may have some difficulty explaining your grasp of Britishisms, but Hey! Who’s gonna prove anything? ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2010, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-time-travel-and-bring-back-a-backpack-most-valuable-contents/561166/54 "2010-11-20T02:55:28Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > Yes, but I’d know it was genuine, and a very clever forgery that only cost me $100 would be good enough aesthetically to put it on a nice stand in my library. Ditto with a Shakespeare first folio, a painting by Rembrandt or that little ditty I bought from Mozart. Oh, fair enough. 😃 I’d imagine I’d be able to get the entire extant works of Vincent van Gogh for a couple cases of booze, then. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2010, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-time-travel-and-bring-back-a-backpack-most-valuable-contents/561166/55 "2010-11-20T03:35:53Z")
How about some [stamps](http://www.famousstamps.org/zgrill.htm)? > [@](#): > > The Benjamin Franlin Z-Grill Stamp has the unique feature that there are tiny squares embossed into the paper in the back of the stamp to absorb the ink. This is to prevent people from cheating the postal system by washing out the cancellation marks. > > The Z Grill Stamp was bought for $935,000 in 1998 but later traded for a block of 4 Inverted Jenny Stamps which were bought for **$2.97 million**. > > Only two known copies of the Z Grill Stamps are known to exist. One is owned by the New York Public Library while the other copy is the in the hands of financier Bill Gross (who traded for it with the Inverted Jenny block). $2.97 million for a one-penny stamp. Pretty good return. And hey, they fell out from between the pages of this old book I bought! (As far as anyone knows.) ---
**Author:** ![oliversarmy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/eb8c5e/32.png) [@oliversarmy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/oliversarmy)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2010, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-time-travel-and-bring-back-a-backpack-most-valuable-contents/561166/56 "2010-11-20T04:23:36Z")
OK, this may sound weird, but I would do two things. I would take a recording device and I would bring back food. I’m not really that interested in how I could make money, I’m more interested in how we got here. I’m interested in how language has changed and how people survived. I wouldn’t go so far back that I couldn’t communicate, but if I went back even a few decades, idioms probably would be a problem. I know we have a lot of written evidence in recent history, but we really don’t know how people talked, say 200 years ago. We also have a good idea of what they ate and we have evidence of how they cooked, but we really don’t know what they appreciated or how it was prepared compared to now. ---
**Author:** ![Cyberhwk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7993a0/32.png) [@Cyberhwk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cyberhwk)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2010, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-time-travel-and-bring-back-a-backpack-most-valuable-contents/561166/57 "2010-11-20T05:05:48Z")
> [@Spoke](#): > > Especially the T Rex pics, what with all the elaborate and colorful plumage and all. Yeah, that’d be a real bitch if you went to all that trouble and T-Rex ends up being a giant peacock. > [@postcards](#): > > Microsoft’s IPO in 1986 was $21 per share, Google’s in 2004 was $85. > > As was noted upthread, $100 in today’s money is less than in the past. > > $100 from today would be worth about $88 in 2004, so you get one share of Google. > > $100 from today would be worth about $52 in 1986, so you get three shares of Microsoft. No, Microsoft has split multiple times and is up [25,386.11%](http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1290229317565&chddm=2493798&chls=IntervalBasedLine&q=NASDAQ:MSFT&&fct=big) from 1986. Would have done much better selling in 2000 though. GOOG is up just 445% however. Also, as I understood it, you were allowed the equivalent of $100. So you had $100 worth of buying power whenever you chose to go. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2010, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-time-travel-and-bring-back-a-backpack-most-valuable-contents/561166/58 "2010-11-20T05:11:13Z")
I’d buy a weekend with (some SDMB member I don’t like)'s Mom! ---
**Author:** ![Civil\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d78d45/32.png) [@Civil\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Civil_Guy)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2010, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-time-travel-and-bring-back-a-backpack-most-valuable-contents/561166/59 "2010-11-20T05:40:25Z")
…I suppose there’s no way of swiping some famous assasination weapon before it’s used? Sigh, which means that that particular assassination never took place (at that time), so in modern times we never heard about it, so at the very least we’re left unsure about whether our theft was actually meaningful. Fudge. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2010, 7:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-time-travel-and-bring-back-a-backpack-most-valuable-contents/561166/60 "2010-11-20T07:13:48Z")
> [@Spoke](#): > > How about some [stamps](http://www.famousstamps.org/zgrill.htm)? > > $2.97 million for a one-penny stamp. Pretty good return. And hey, they fell out from between the pages of this old book I bought! (As far as anyone knows.) Yes, but when they are that rare, how woudl you find them in the past? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-time-travel-and-bring-back-a-backpack-most-valuable-contents/561166.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-time-travel-and-bring-back-a-backpack-most-valuable-contents/561166.md?page=4)