The real purchasing power of a single goldback

There is as much gold in the bottle as there is in the Goldback.

It isn’t a big secret that the dollar is quickly losing value and has been for a long time. (My parents bought their Halloween candy for a penny!) There’s a lot of ways to measure inflation and just how much value the dollar has lost. Here’s a new one:

Imagine for a moment that we could produce Goldbacks a hundred years ago, say, 1923. What would a single Goldback cost? Well, today they run at an average rate of $4.11, which, is about double the spot price of gold. In 1923 this same gold would be $20.00 so naturally 1/1,000th of an ounce would would be $0.02. Add the premium back in and you have $.0.04!

This means that compared to Goldbacks that the dollar has lost 99% in 100 years! If you had saved in Goldbacks 100 years ago vs. dollars (we aren’t around then, don’t look it up), then you would’ve saved 99% of your spending power. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next 100 years.

Now, some folks have asked themselves… couldn’t we just barter with gold shot directly and avoid the 100% premium on Goldbacks? Sure! You could totally do that! We’ve included some photos so you can see what that looks like and you can decide whether that is a good idea or not.