The "Historically Rich" Game
There is a little game I like to play (or train of thought I like to ride, or
whatever label or metaphor you choose), especially when I'm reading or
watching well-researched historical fiction or non-fiction: imagine you're going back to live in a certain historic era,
and bringing with you various items from our modern time
so that in the past, you can sell these items and get rich. What items
do you buy now to sell then?
Of course the game has rules: whichever time period you choose, you can only bring items that actually existed back then -- no carrying anachronisms like plastic or artificial fabric to Shakespeare's England. You can't get rich by "inventing" or "discovering" something before its time, only by selling already-existing expensive things. (The one exception is: you can bring modern versions of things whose modern-ness is not detectable by ordinary human senses, only via scientific testing which didn't exist then. For example: you can have linen or silk cloth dyed with artificial modern dye to reproduce Tyrian purple or other super-expensive natural colors, because fake vs. real Tyrian purple dye can only be detected via chemical testing which people back then couldn't do anyway. If you're going to a time where transparent glass existed but was very expensive, you can have modern mass-produced glass provided it looks and feels identical to the super-expensive stuff Venetians were producing, even though modern glass is made by a different process and likely has some detectable chemical differences as well.)
You're limited to spending $1,000 in our time buying things to take back. However, you cannot spend more than $50 on any one item or "type" of item -- for example, if you're going back to Elizabethan England, you'll definitely want to bring some black peppercorns, since they were literally worth their weight in gold ... but you can't spend more than $50 on pepper or "spices" in general.
Also, for purposes of the game, you only need focus on "things you sell to get rich," not "things intended for personal use." The thousand dollars does not cover your personal clothing, food, furnishings or medicine; assume that's all taken care of.
Things you can legally acquire for free (via Craigslist, roadside garbage salvage and the like) CAN be added to your list without counting against your $1,000 spending limit. (When I lived in northern Virginia, I remember one of my neighbors once threw away a broken dresser with one of those big rounded unframed beveled-edge mirrors. The mirror had many chips along its edges, which makes it garbage by modern standards -- but if you went back to a time after perfect glass mirrors were invented but were still hyper-expensive luxuries, you could take that chipped mirror, use a glass cutter to cut it into un-chipped smaller pieces, and add the mirrors to your list without counting any of it against the $1,000 spending limit.)
Also, I confess: I've never played the game to the full extent of writing out a complete list of at least 20 different items plus freebies -- it's more like "I'm really enjoying this well-researched novel about life in an early Mesopotamian Bronze Age city ... hmm, if I went there to live I'd bring $50 worth of pre-1982 copper pennies -- that alone is enough scrap copper to set me up VERY nicely in an early Bronze Age city. Technically, any such pennies I find in the street don't count toward the $50 limit either. Also, I'd want $50 worth of rough lapis lazuli from one of those online gemstone or geology wholesalers... or should I buy $50 worth of tumbled-gemstone lapis lazuli beads instead?"
So .. what sort of el cheapo or even el free-o modern items would you bring back to various time periods?
Of course the game has rules: whichever time period you choose, you can only bring items that actually existed back then -- no carrying anachronisms like plastic or artificial fabric to Shakespeare's England. You can't get rich by "inventing" or "discovering" something before its time, only by selling already-existing expensive things. (The one exception is: you can bring modern versions of things whose modern-ness is not detectable by ordinary human senses, only via scientific testing which didn't exist then. For example: you can have linen or silk cloth dyed with artificial modern dye to reproduce Tyrian purple or other super-expensive natural colors, because fake vs. real Tyrian purple dye can only be detected via chemical testing which people back then couldn't do anyway. If you're going to a time where transparent glass existed but was very expensive, you can have modern mass-produced glass provided it looks and feels identical to the super-expensive stuff Venetians were producing, even though modern glass is made by a different process and likely has some detectable chemical differences as well.)
You're limited to spending $1,000 in our time buying things to take back. However, you cannot spend more than $50 on any one item or "type" of item -- for example, if you're going back to Elizabethan England, you'll definitely want to bring some black peppercorns, since they were literally worth their weight in gold ... but you can't spend more than $50 on pepper or "spices" in general.
Also, for purposes of the game, you only need focus on "things you sell to get rich," not "things intended for personal use." The thousand dollars does not cover your personal clothing, food, furnishings or medicine; assume that's all taken care of.
Things you can legally acquire for free (via Craigslist, roadside garbage salvage and the like) CAN be added to your list without counting against your $1,000 spending limit. (When I lived in northern Virginia, I remember one of my neighbors once threw away a broken dresser with one of those big rounded unframed beveled-edge mirrors. The mirror had many chips along its edges, which makes it garbage by modern standards -- but if you went back to a time after perfect glass mirrors were invented but were still hyper-expensive luxuries, you could take that chipped mirror, use a glass cutter to cut it into un-chipped smaller pieces, and add the mirrors to your list without counting any of it against the $1,000 spending limit.)
Also, I confess: I've never played the game to the full extent of writing out a complete list of at least 20 different items plus freebies -- it's more like "I'm really enjoying this well-researched novel about life in an early Mesopotamian Bronze Age city ... hmm, if I went there to live I'd bring $50 worth of pre-1982 copper pennies -- that alone is enough scrap copper to set me up VERY nicely in an early Bronze Age city. Technically, any such pennies I find in the street don't count toward the $50 limit either. Also, I'd want $50 worth of rough lapis lazuli from one of those online gemstone or geology wholesalers... or should I buy $50 worth of tumbled-gemstone lapis lazuli beads instead?"
So .. what sort of el cheapo or even el free-o modern items would you bring back to various time periods?
posted by Jennifer Abel at 4:28 PM
3 Comments:
I had to solve a similar problem for a novel in which the protagonist travels from the present back to WWII England. After a bit of research on the wartime black market, I settled on tobacco as the item that could be easily carried and sold for a significant profit.
Tobacco would be a good one for World War Two Britain! Just make sure not to carry Nivea lotion -- in the real World War Two, some Nazi spies were identified and caught because they had Nivea products in their luggage, which had not been available in Allied countries since the start of the war.
Nazi spies in Britain, I mean.
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