During the Great Depression, many people lost most of their money gambling in the stock market.

One man lost it all and tried selling his car for $100.

Do you have the $100 to buy that car?

During the Great Depression, $1 was a silver coin that had 24 grams of silver.

The gold $20 had 30 grams of gold.

So one would either need $100 in silver dollars (2400g silver) or $100 in gold dollars (150g gold). It is a 16:1 ratio.

To buy the car with the same amount of metal in today’s US coins, both containing 31.1g of their respective metals, that would require 77.17 silver dollars or 4.82 gold $50 coins (because the gold had the face value changed from $20 to $50 but the calculation is by the metal’s weight).

$100 in cash would not buy that car today because the cash today is not redeemable in silver or gold.

If that man offered you his car for $100, do you have enough silver or gold to afford it today?