I would love to see a photo or video of someone spending gold coins in the United States before we removed them from circulation. Does anyone know of any?
My grandma told me about seeing someone spend a $5 gold piece at the local store/post office when she was a little girl. That was a lot of money in 1914 - probably a week's wages or more. It made a big impression on a little girl from a poor family.
That would be tough. It is hard to remember a time when we didn't all have cameras at the ready. Wasn't that long ago (in my mind) that my wife and I were in a fuss about buying a video recorder to film our kids before they grew up. As I recall a video recorder was quite the pricey purchase back then and they were somewhat few and far between. If a person was videoing something back then it was quite the special event. It would be a stretch to think of anyone videoing a common transaction back then.... Lug out the machine. Purchase the tapes. And I don't remember if we had to take those tapes to a camera store for processing or not. Suffice to say, doing a video back before smart phones was quite a cumbersome event.
Gold went out of circulation in the early 1930s. The first experimental motion-picture cameras didn't really start appearing until the 1890s. Handheld motion cameras started appearing in the 1910s, I think. Any "video" would have been made very near the end of gold's run. Average annual wages are a bit hard to nail down; they varied widely by region and occupation. It looks to me like they increased dramatically from 1910 ($200-400/yr) to 1930 (about $2000/yr), but my sources are suspect. My father was raised as one of eight children in a not-very-prosperous family, and he recalls each of the children being given a gold quarter eagle on some special occasion. That makes me think that gold coins weren't quite so out-of-reach as you might think, at least toward the end of their circulation. In most areas, though, paper money ruled. Would you rather have a tiny coin that's easy to lose, or folding money that can be kept safely even in a pocket that has holes?
Eventually the mints ( IMO) will go to digital money, especially when modern technology can make counterfeiting easy and profitable. No one wants it, including me, but when a person owns more than 3 wifi/cell capable devices each, those that do not, will be equivalent to people in todays society that can not read paper document. IMO.
For a recent video, I remember seeing one here on CT where some guy was trying to spend a $50 gold AGE at a fast food drive up. The cashier wouldn't take it.
Couldn't find any. But here's Bart after Homer gave him some money. "Hey this isn't real money it's printed by the Montana militia." "It'll be real soon enough."
