I think you’d get enough by drinking “OG Co’Cola”…
Yep, just take a side trip to South America, bring back some coca plants, and make your own. No chance of getting busted.
For personal use only, though! Starting a coke dealing biz in the old west would jack up the timeline just a wee bit.
ETA: of course, I think just about every patent medication back then had either cocaine or heroin in it, so it wasn’t that unusual a substance to come across even back then.
ETA Part II:
…yeah, even the drinks. There used to be a wine with cocaine back then too.
I’d have more to worry about from the hookers due to no penicillin being available.
Bring some with you! Again, for personal use only.
Yeah, I usually think of time travel as “Only take back what you can carry on your person”.
But if I get some luggage, hey! Modern medicines, books, ooh, maybe a copy of The Way Things Work … and a bag of Twizzlers (but if anyone found that, I’d be burned as a witch).
When did soap for personal cleansing become a mass-market commodity?
Bars of Soap and Soap flakes became industrialized in the 1800s. By 1850 is a being produced and sold and by 1880s was a fairly major business.
It’s the Old West, not the Dark Ages! Pretty sure they had licorice stick candy back then. Not red granted, but you could say it was some newfangled city candy you brought from out East.
Stock exchanges existed back then. You could take some antique banknotes back and setup a brokerage account. With your knowledge of the future and which companies are profitable, it should be relatively easy to create a successful investment portfolio. Spread your investments around and don’t make crazy gains and you should go unnoticed and not change the timeline too much. That was the premise in a time travel movie called Primer.
Bringing back real money would be practically the same as counterfeiting as there would be two versions of the same bill in circulation. You might as well save your money and print them.
Well, essentially that is like trying to stop WWII, and the danger is that you can then erase yourself from history.
As an example, my grandmother used to reminiscence about a Japanese guy that worked in the Japanese embassy in the old country. Because war came El Salvador, as an ally of the US, declared war on Japan too and the Japanese embassy staff had to leave. My grandmother lost contact with his Japanese boyfriend. But then met my Grandfather.
Changing the past would have likely meant that my father and I would never have been born.
(As an aside, I think I will ask someday what would have been the equivalent of “killing baby Hitler” for the WWII in the Pacific theater.)
There’s less certainty that it would pay off, but I could probably replicate the plot of the movie “Yesterday”: write some hit songs a few years before they were actually written. Most musicians (hell, plenty of non-musicians) could “compose” the likes of “Jingle Bells”, “Camptown Races”, “Stars and Stripes Forever”, etc., from memory. No need to bring anything back with me, although I’d do some boning up beforehand on when the songs were released.
Buy land and resell it in the 21st century.
Again, no major screwing with the timeline or I’m going to take my time machine and go home!
Also again, there are a million ways to exploit knowledge of the future to make money, given time, but I’m more interested in what’s the best thing of value to take with you, to spend, sell or trade right away, as soon as boots hit the ground.
Over the counter pharmaceuticals would seem to be easy enough to obtain, small enough to carry, cheap enough and highly sellable once your reputation was established. Some pain relievers, antacids, cold meds should prove a good start.
Ooh, I like that idea! Mostly because I could see myself having a Snake Oil Salesman traveling wagon. Oh, heck, maybe my own caboose that’d go from town to town. Imagine Snake Oil that really worked, and cleared up the clap!
(antacids? Too tame, let’s sell some Viagra!)
I was going to say until 1906 and later coca and opium were standard medicines to the point where you’d just buy them like you would aspirin these days …setting yourself up as a “chemist” wouldn’t be hard to do… Hell becoming a doctor wasn’t too hard either …
Funny thing about snake oil:
(Click on video to put volume). (You can stop the clip at minute 19)
Although the term “snake oil” today means “something that is not what it says it is - a con”, it is actually full of omega 3. When given to mice, it helps them navigate around mazes quicker and helps their muscles. It is not yet known if humans would benefit from snake oil.
Snake oil is made from the Chinese water snake. It first became well known in the 19th Century when Chinese immigrants brought it to America. The reason why “snake oil” has its current meaning is because merchants would say that the snake oil used by the Chinese themselves was rubbish and that they had the better stuff.
Nice little story, but the whole time I was reading it kept thinking that after being unsuccessful finding the platform again in New York, Charley tried in Boston but forgot to bring the extra nickel to get off the train…
Bring which? Hookers? Blow? Both? 
Modern hookers have better teeth & are more used to bathing regularly. Period hookers might be easier to control though.