While watching, probably the first, Let's Make A Deal show with Monty Hall. Since this was 1962 or 1963, the men were wearing suits and the women were wearing dresses, everyone was very quite and not shouting things like "Take the box, man" or Take the money". Monty ask a woman if she would trade her just won prize for 10 pounds in silver dollars, which she did. Monty showed that they were indeed silver dollars in the box, all bright and shinny with lots of luster. Since this was 1962 or 1963, they were probably newly acquired silver dollars from the bank. Turns out the 10 pounds was 170 silver dollars. He then ask her if she would trade the 10 pounds of silver dollars for 2 1/2 ounces of paper money. She traded right away for the paper money as she said, so she wouldn't have to carry that much weight home with her. Turns out it was all 1 dollar bills. 30 - 1 dollar bills to the ounce so she traded for $70. Just thought it was interesting because back then the silver dollars were still only worth 1 dollar.
Interestingly, gold was about $35.00 an ounce so the silver to gold weight ratio was 35:1, but the paper to gold weight ratio would have been 1.25:1. Not sure what the takeaway from that is but I had to get it out of my head.
Life lesson: People DO NOT LIKE dollar coins. They never have. The mint should quit trying to force them down the collective throats of an unwilling populace.
A troy ounce of gold (or anything else) is 31.1 grams, and a dollar bill weighs about 1 gram, so the actual ratio is closer to 1.125:1 -- you'd have needed one and an eighth pounds of $1 bills to buy a pound of gold. Of course, all bills weigh about the same regardless of denomination. Even today, a stack of $50 bills would buy more than its own weight in gold; a stack of $20s would buy about half its own weight in gold. One more thought -- in 1962 or 1963, high-denomination paper was still in circulation. A game show probably wouldn't have been able to get $5000 or $10000 notes, but a stack of $1000 bills would have bought 888 times its own weight in gold!
The buying power of an Eisenhower dollar (same size and almost as heavy as a Morgan) today is about 12 cents in 1962 money. No, I'm not interested in carrying around dimes that weigh most of an ounce each. It's time to renormalize our change, with a tenfold devaluation -- coins denominated at 10c, 50c, $1, and $2.50 or $5. For a variety of reasons, it won't happen before cash itself becomes a quaint relic.
