The 1932 Saratoga Gold Rush

December 5th, 1959

Tom asked me to write up my memories of the gold rush in Saratoga back in ‘32. If you’re old enough, perhaps you remember reading some stories about it in your local paper in July or early August of 1932. As is frequently the case, the newspapers didn’t get the full scoop. I’ve flipped through a few of the little black books which I'd used as journals to refresh my memory of decades past. Don’t worry, I’ll tell you about 1932 in a minute here without troubling you too much with detours into the years before 1932.

The third time I met my grand-nephew Tom, I was visiting my uncle Victor in New York in '32. Since the papers had declared me missing and "presumed drowned" in 1921, I’d avoided my family for quite a few years, so that I didn’t turn up in the Found section of the papers. They had indeed found my body in Tom's timeline, but “forewarned is forearmed” and so forth. Tom says that successful timeline manipulation generally avoids changing newspaper story headlines. That’s because if two timelines diverge too much from each other in their agreed upon history and common knowledge it becomes more difficult to transfer between them. Not impossible, but Tom says timeline jumpers are often locked up in asylums if their reality differs too much from the consensus reality they end up in.

Beginning at age nine, I'd played out my life using Tom's playbook to match my life with information from his timeline as closely as I could. I didn’t actually drown, but it was close. On his advice, I also collected certain top quality US coins at or near face value and studied ancient Greek with our neighbor, Mr. Yocum. Linus Pauling got to borrow Yocum's Greek textbook, but I borrowed mother's and didn't begrudge him that. I HAVE envied his Nobel, however. German was my second language, taught to me by my grandmother shortly after I could speak English. My German came in very handy for my chess and chemistry studies, since the Germans had a good head start in both areas. I hadn’t studied either one for too long before my date with the ocean.

Tom had told me that the ripple effects of me surviving and continuing along the life path I’d been on at the time of my death in his timeline could be pretty substantial. Reflecting on my childhood here on my 56th birthday, I think I see what he means. It probably wouldn’t have surprised too many of the people I knew in my teens if I’d ended up getting a Nobel like Linus did. There are no guarantees in life, of course, but Herr Doktor Terman seemed to think I had potential and Berkeley was the place to study chemistry in that era. It still is, I suppose. But, enough of my wool gathering.

Shortly after I "drowned", I met Tom for the second time at his slightly encoded meeting place and time. I brought along my cousin Jackson for backup and moral support. Surviving for 9 hours at night in the ocean while avoiding being rescued is not a cakewalk, so I was still a bit shaky from that experience. All my preparatory hours in the water beforehand had saved my life, but I had no energy to spare.

Also, Jackson came along because Tom had indicated that in his timeline Jackson was on a course towards death before he turned 21 as well. It seemed to me that if anyone would have an idea of how to prevent Jackson from dying young, it would be Tom. He took Jackson into the future to get his bone cancer cured with no persuasion necessary.

I should probably mention that Jackson and I are more like twins than cousins. We were born in the same month. We grew up in each other’s houses. If we weren’t at one of our houses, we were most likely together at our grandma’s house. As teens, we saw less of each other, since we moved to California and Jackson stayed in Oregon. So, Tom, Jackson and I travelled together a bit in 1921.

While he went back to the future with Jackson, Tom sent me to Greece for a decade to study the country and more ancient Greek. The Jack who "drowned" in 1921 scarcely resembled the hirsute Giannis Ioannidis who gave his uncle Vic timely financial advice in the fall of '29. Victor was definitely indebted to Tom for that information. I’d had to tell him a bit about my source of inside information after the big crash. He’d trusted me, but not entirely believed I’d be right, I think. So, Victor had known of Tom for a few years, but I wasn’t aware that they’d actually met each other or corresponded before the events I’ll write about shortly.

I have to confess that New York was too much for me after Greece. Vic tried to expose me to the latest in literature and music, but I'd never really been much for crowds and my time in Greece only enhanced that feeling. I think the thing I enjoyed most about my time in New York was visiting Grand Central Station before dawn on my birthday and watching the sun light up the ceiling at dawn. Much as I'd like to say I met Aaron Copland or Langston Hughes while visiting New York, I didn't. I also missed out on the Paris salons of the 1920s. This is probably part of why timeline travel exists; to go see things you missed in your original timeline.

Okay, here’s the Saratoga scoop. One day during my latest visit with uncle Vic, Tom showed up. I think Vic must’ve told him I was there. You see, the third time I met my great-nephew Tom, he brought a cancer free Jackson along with him, so clearly he hoped to find me. After we had all shared stories, hugs and food, Tom got down to his latest business proposal.

"I need help, uncles. In a couple of weeks, there's going to be a gold rush going on in Saratoga Springs; I want us at the front of the line. An engineer named Gerhard Fisher out in Palo Alto is now selling portable metal detectors that he makes in his garage."

"Induction balance?"

Eye rolls all around. Hey, I can't help it if I'm a Popular Mechanics addict.

"According to newspaper reports in my timeline, several unnamed men each found hundreds of dollars worth of gold and silver coins, with estimated totals of coins running as high as three thousand dollars. I'm assuming none of you would object to being an anonymous prospector who strikes it rich?"

A general shaking of heads.

"Former Saratoga Springs mayor Harry Pettee used to live on the property where the coins are. They'll be preparing the property to build a new drink hall there soon, and the coins will be discovered while they’re clearing the property. Pettee made headlines a few years ago; he disappeared with $300,000 of his company's money."

"I don’t think these coins are Pettee thefts based on their ages; none had dates more recent than 1890. Perhaps they were buried as a result of the Panic of ‘93, who knows? In any case, I propose that we Metalloscope the property under the waxing gibbous moon.”

General nods of agreement.

Fisher's Metalloscope wasn't light or easy to handle by modern standards, but we managed to detect the whole area over a few nights. First we scanned the area, marking the hot spots with tonic water (quinine fluoresces) and locating our marked spots with a Wood's lamp. Then, we quietly and carefully excavated the lion's share of our hot spots. We left behind a few good prospects which we could easily locate in daylight. Then, we signed up for the work crew clearing the area. The rest of the Saratoga Springs story is what you’ve read in the papers. It panned out just like Tom had described it happening in his timeline.

After the governor shut down the gold rush, we went to uncle Vic's house to weigh and estimate our total finds. Tom was pleasantly surprised by his $20,000 in gold and silver coins estimate.

" I was expecting we'd each only get enough money to buy a 1916 Steinway piano from this adventure!" He winked; he was making an obscure John Zug reference which only I would catch.

"Gentlemen, even if we tithe to Yaddo to support their work, I still think there's enough here to proceed with the next phase of my plan if we pool our resources!"

Neither Jackson or Victor knew much about Tom's plan, so they both waited quietly for him to continue. Since I'd been his coin collecting agent and ancient Greek scholar for nearly two decades, I had some sense of what he planned next.

"I thought you needed either an enormous quantity of silver or else ancient European coins to offset the dilution of the ancient Lavrian mines' silver?"

"True. However, although what we have here may be only $20,000 in face value of gold and silver, in my timeline the numismatic value of these coins is significantly higher. For example, even the poorest quality three cent piece here is worth at least $30 to a coin collector in my time. That's a thousand times its face value for the most common and poorest quality of this coin.

"Gold is well known to fare well as hidden or sunken treasure, since it doesn’t tarnish like silver. Some of the prices collectors will pay in my time for some of the choicest gold coins here would knock your socks off. $28,000 worth of gold coins from this era can easily be worth $10 million or more of my dollars. Obviously, we don't have that much gold on our hands here, but that should give you a pretty good ballpark figure to work with. I think a very conservative estimate of the value of these coins to my collectors is 300 times their total face value, or $6 million.”

“Six million of my dollars would buy 6,000 extra fine Athenian tetradrachms, or four Attic talents. That’s assuming I can find that many in that condition, of course. I should be able to pick up more tetradrachms in somewhat worse condition. Add in some less ancient but also less expensive coins which still have a high silver content from Laurium and I think we may have ten talents between the four of us, if we pool all our resources."

Did I notice a subtle emphasis on the word all? Yes. Tom was referring to my 40,000 1909 S VDB pennies, 62.5% of them purchased from John Zug in 1918 for $437.50.

"What use do you plan to make of our pooled talents, Tom?"

"With your assistance, I plan to help Athens defeat Sparta, Victor!"

“An author specializing in alternate history from my timeline speculated that the presence of Socrates in the Sicilian Expedition might have allowed Alcibiades to lead the Athenians to victory in the Peloponnesian war.”

“A physicist who is also an author theorized that, had the Athenians prevailed, we humans might well be immortals and out exploring the cosmos by now.”

“I think gambling the fruits of our labors of the past few weeks on that possibility and helping out the Athenians is a worthwhile goal.”

“Also, bear in mind that next year President Roosevelt is likely to forbid gold hoarding. Since these coins have special value to collectors, they’ll likely not be affected, but keep that possibility in mind for other gold coins. No being Scrooges, uncles! There’s no need to half sell your coin coin either, you old canards!”

Since Tom was born after Victor had died, but was biologically a few years older than him when he said this, it was likely ironical.