In answer to the reviewer who questioned the wisdom of taking a "mere" million dollars of gold through time: The price of gold averaged $35.25 per ounce in 1961. On May 18, 2011, (today, one-half the one hundred years in the story), it's valued at $1492.60 per ounce, over forty-two and a third times as much: That million dollars of gold would now be worth $42,343,262,40. Too bad they couldn't sleep for fifty years instead of one hundred. Inflation across the board has been 6.5472. Thus the gold will purchase 6.647 times in 2011 what it would in 1961, $6,647,384.84 in purchasing power as these men would understand it. Let's put aside the twist ending in the story: The reality is inflation will only get worse, and gold will only get higher. If the next fifty years repeat the first fifty, this gold will have *fourteen*! times the purchasing power that it had in 1961,(and that was already plenty).
Review of The Rip Van Winkle Caper
