How about those upside-down plane stamps? I’d get some of those. (If anyone knows what I’m talking about please let me know)
Most people are not stamp collectors, and open the letter, read it and chuck the envelope in the trash. That is why stamps are rare much of the time.
Go on, think back to when we did more with mail, precomputer. You got home, took in the mail. Sorted through it to toss out the junk mail, opened letters and bills, read them and tossed the envelopes. Did you even look at the stamps? Would you have noticed if one was a misprint?
That would be the Inverted Jenny. It is believed that only 100 (1 sheet) left the printer unnoticed, so there are only 100 to be had and that whole sheet was immediately sold (by the original purchaser) for $15,000, making each stamp already worth $150 in 1918, or about $2,300 today. Your $100 of today’s money would only be worth about a $6.34. Buying one would take some *serious *haggling skills on your part.
We could pull a train!
Wait - I can go anywhere in the past, any time in the past that I wish?
Very well. I’ll go to North Korean military HQ, at whatever time in the past day or so that it was on its night shift. Specifically, I’d like you to plunk me down in a room full of documents pertaining to the nuclear program. These documents should be common in that specific time and place, and thus they qualify. 
I’ll stuff my backpack full and come home a hero. Or perhaps just take pictures on my iPhone.
Oh, you insist upon something more common? Fair enough - transport me to a night-shift diamond mine in Africa. There must be a room where rough diamonds are stored prior to transport - again, I’ll help myself. Recall that diamonds are actually not nearly as rare in nature DeBeers has rendered them by restricting the supply.
I’ll go to CostCo and fill up the backpack with every peppercorn jar I can find, and then go back to the Renaissance and sell that shit for gold currency. Once the backpack of peppercorns has been converted to gold coins, back to the future I go!
I wonder how much land I could by for $100 in the early 1800s. Maybe a few acres in downtown Dallas before there was a Dallas.
Also, I bet there are mineral rights to be had on the cheap.
Assuming I had time to get things properly recorded, would such a long-ago claim have any value?
It would have been sold for taxes long ago, since you weren’t around to pay them.
This is what we meant while talking about it. So your $100 would be worth $100 in Roman coinage, or whatever.
Wew actually brought this up again over the weekend, with me incorporating some of these suggestions. One interesting thing to come out of it - finding things that were worth more due to their great condition. Like a bunch of ancient pocket sundials like the one that was just on Pawn Stars.
Originally Posted by Morbo View Post
What I came up with was to go to a comic book store in the 30’s and buy $100 worth of that Superman comic where he’s got the car over his head.
There weren’t any. There was no such thing as “comic book stores” in the 1930’s.