In the early 1960s you could buy a gallon of gas for 30 - 33 cents a gallon.
Now it is averaging around $4 a gallon.
I looked up the melt price* of a pre 1964 90% silver Washington quarter today and the price was
$2.9966 A 1946 -2008 nickel is worth
0.0584 That gives us a grand total of
$3.055
or shall we say $3.06 in current value of the metal in those coins.
(*The melt price is simply the value of the metal not the value of the coin as a collectors item. The value of the nickel in a nickel is currently more than the face value. )
If we go back to the 1942-1945 nickel we get a value that looks like this:
$2.9966
0.9932
$3.9898
Which is pretty close to the current price of gas.
If we do the 33¢ a gallon price using the two nickel issues it looks like this:
$2.9966
0.0584 (current '46 - '08 nickel)
0.0239 (pre 1982 copper penny)
0.0239 "
$3.1028 or $3.10
or
$2.9966
0.9932 (1942-45 nickel)
0.0239 (pre 1982 copper penny)
0.0239 "
$4.0376
Although growing world wide demand has bumped up against daily oil field production limits, it looks like what is changing most is the value of the dollar. So while the media keeps harping about the price of gas, their real culprit at this stage is the rapid rate of inflation.
Here is a chart from January that shows the value of oil in dollars, Euros, and gold. You can see the divergence.
https://matt-that.com/wp-content/upl...hart-small.gif
This chart is elsewhere but matt-that had the nicest one.
Now consider that the dollar value of gold is being manipulated to keep it lower than it should be. The price comparison between gold and oil probably paints a clearer picture.
So how many of us are seeing an increase in our earnings to reflect the loss of value of our currency? That would push many of us into higher tax bracket so it might just be a wash.
Ruth