As insomniacs all over the world will attest, sometimes the things that go through your head in the middle of the night beggar belief.

Last night, I lay awake wondering about the practicality of going back in time to hoover up all those pristine Speedmasters that were available for pennies, or Daytonas on sale for the price of a meal and bottle of wine.

Leaving aside the practicality of time travel itself and the actual acquisition of a time machine (we'll take that as read), how would one actually go about taking money from today and buying lots of old watches (or other things), stashing them safely free from interference, and then coming back to today to either enjoy your NOS hoard, or flog them for £millions...

You can't send money electronically backwards through time, and today's hard currency wouldn't be accepted "back then" (in the UK, even a few years ago, the banknotes were all different).

Any bright ideas?

 

I've had this very thought many times but with property in London and not watches.
My only solution was to go even further back in time, rob a bank, then deposit the money and with compounding it should give you enough money to buy what you need in the future.

 

Why bother? Social media is a Now machine.
Just look at Hodinkee, & a thousand lesser known promoters on the web.

Buy some item now, write a pile of crap about it, sell next week for 10 times purchase price.

 

Become a really new wave artist. Hang around with Damien Hirst and befriend the Saatchi brothers, go to every art opening and donate your work to worthy causes. Bingo, you are now a famous artist worth millions without time travel or bank robbery . If only it was that easy ???????????

 

It all depends on how far back you want to go, even a few years would see a dramatic decrease in price of most watches.
I do like the idea of going further back, robbing a bank or similar (ie Italian Job style - the original of course) then spending it on whatever you want.

 

I've been thinking about this as well.

Basically I think you can't hoard all the pieces and let them be NOS, because then the huge media hypers of today and the attention drummer dealers and auction houses can't get hold of any to drum up.

Also I recall that speedys and Rolex GMT masters and Daytonas were not the price of groceries. I remember there was a thread on here about historical speedy prices and it was something like 2k? in today's money.

I remember a rolex friend telling me about an auction of a particular military Px bought GMT master and how the guy was told by his friend or CO or someone that it's a good investment tool piece, and he bought it with around 3 months of his salary or something. He didn't wear it much after that and it got sold in auction for very high a few years back.

 

I like the idea of the robbery or some other crime that would get you a load of cash, although law-abiding citizens like us would never think of how to do it. And, how would you deposit the money you'd robbed? You won't have any current ID to open an account, or an address to receive your paying in book... though maybe you could pay someone to get fake ID done...

There's the idea that you could go back and visit your childhood self and give them a load of swag to keep somewhere, but how do you know you'd trust the little shit not to sell it? And what psychological impact would seeing a future version of yourself have... might send you off the rails back then and you you'd become would cease to exist in future...

 

Microsoft shares and horseracing would cover me if I could go back with some marked up Almanacs.

If you are a time traveller I am interested in joining you..... please post before this one with an invitation :0)

 

Of course, the most practical thing to do, would be to go back in time a few weeks before the last big lottery, buy a ticket and legitimately claim your millions - then go and hoover up all the overpriced stuff on the market without caring

 

...What if....the control of old, outdated money by the regular creation of newer types of cash was created by time travellers FROM the future in order to thwart other time travellers from earlier periods taking advantage of this idea?

 

Are we allowed to take physical items back with us? Or is it more of a la nude Terminator style time travelling

 

Exactly what I was thinking. 'La nude' doesn't mean you cant take physical items with ... there are still a few places to stash em....

And if you can bring swag back to the future, then surely this could go along for the ride (plus the first old banknote to start the winning)...

 

Just tattoo the chemical composition of a few pharmaceuticals on your body.

 

I'd be more interested in going back a couple millennia. With my wealth of knowledge from Game of Thrones, Risk, Catan, Call of Duty and Monopoly I could take over and rule an empire.

 

Its all a closed loop :0) = predestination

 

Take gold back in time with you, but the exchange rate isn't good. About 1,200 per oz now, throughout the 60s it was around 300 per oz. You would make your money back on the NOS speedys though. Although, if you put 300 dolars into the stock market in 1960, including reinvesting dividends, I wonder how much better/worse off you would have been than if you just bought a watch?

 

I am an Arnie fan but on that basis I think I will travel with the T-X model...….

 

I think the nude vs non-nude argument could be solved by saying if you are allowed to take things to & fro, then it's only what you could carry - eg in a backpack. So a half ton of gold one way and 100 NOS B&P Speedmasters the other, wouldn't work. I suppose if you had a sprawling family home that was still in your family, then you might be able to somehow acquire a lot of stuff and hide it behind a false wall in an outbuilding that you know hasn't been developed in current times...

But the simplest way to make a fortune would be to take back last week's winning lottery numbers in your head, walk into a shop and buy a ticket with £2, and stash the ticket somewhere, then collect it on your return and claim it legitimately The fact that lottery jackpots go weeks and weeks without being won must prove that time travel has not yet been invented...

 

You need a bank account and ID for a big win..... cash at the bookies or track to build a pot and buy a footprint first.... then I like the lottery :0)

 

And the lilly-livered, 21st century softlad reality would catch up with you pretty quickly, I suspect