It's already become the new dime. But even if it loses another 90% of its value, there will still be people fighting for continued production of the penny, so we'll think it's still meaningful. "Excuse me, I gave you $20 for this $19.98 candy bar, could I please have my two cents back?"
It’s actually the new nickel. Based on CPI data the buying power of a dollar at the beginning of the 20th century was around 25X what it is today.
In 1944, you could buy a house in the Bay Area for $4000. Today, that same house will be worth over $1,000,000. So, in terms of real estate in certain cities/states, our paper money is practically pocket change. You would need 10,000 $100 banknotes, or 100 stacks of $100 bills to buy a house (possibly even more!). Altogether, the house in the example is worth 250x it's initial value. HOWEVER, it's not really inflation that did this, but, a real estate bubble. Any inflation calculator will tell you $4000 in the 1940s would be approx. 50/60,000 today. It's hard to answer your question exactly, because there are great inconsistencies with house prices. Natural inflation usually follows a steady pattern. Real estate in the Bay Area defies this. Around the time of "Little House on the Prairie" and Laura Ingalls Wilder, I would think $0.01 would be like $1 today- if you are asking about purchasing power of money prior to this date, that is the answer to your question. (I might gone too deep into real estate comparisons and explanations.)
If there weren't other forces at play, $1000 and even $5000 or $10000 bills would take care of that issue. In 1944, you could've paid for that house with a single $5000 bill, and gotten a single $1000 bill as change. Today, you'd need just one stack of $10000's. But when have people ever needed to buy a house with pocket change? Buying a house is a big deal, involving tons of paperwork. It's not like you're going to keep a change in home ownership under the radar of taxing authorities.
I definitely get your meaning. That said, one man's pocket change is not necessarily another's. I once had a guy buy 4, yes 4, $5 million dollar homes I built, all side by side, just so he had someplace for friends and family to stay for 2 weeks out of the year when he took them all skiing. And no, he did not finance the purchase, simply wrote a check. Now that's pocket change !
Yup. I saw it in the small at yesterday's show, where a child was counting out dimes to buy a cent in a 2x2, a guy my age was adding up all his 20s to see if he had enough to buy his first 1916-D dime (he did, with nothing to spare), and another guy was plopping down wads of $100s to cover a stack of gold. But even if your guy could've pulled $20 million out of a pocket, he (okay, his people) still would've had to deal with all the paperwork around deeds, titles, and taxes. No municipality is going to say "well, since this house sold for cash we have no idea who owns it now, guess we won't try to collect any property tax." No, if we want to talk about big completed-on-the-spot cash transactions, let's be realistic -- art, PMs, or drugs.
