One Truly Hard Dollar

The dollar will inevitably lose value over the long term. How can we protect ourselves?

Here is a dollar that is truly hard currency. It has steadfastly preserved its purchasing power for more than 100 years.

If you lock it in a safe, it does not inflate away, does not rust, and no mice will gnaw at it.

But above all, what makes it hard is not merely that 10% of it is copper and it does not scratch easily — it is that 90% of it is gold. Gold is the only truly hard currency.

Consider this: if someone in 1907, when this gold coin worth 20 dollars was minted, had placed 20 dollars in paper money in their safe instead of one of these coins, the gold coin would today be worth 83 times the paper dollar — put another way, the dollar has lost 98.8% (1/83) of its purchasing power.

Excluding numismatic premiums, this 20-dollar investment gold coin is worth approximately 630,000 forints, while a very similar 1933 Saint Gaudens gold 20-dollar piece has already fetched 7 million dollars at auction.