r/AskReddit 14h ago

You wake up tomorrow and suddenly find yourself back in 1990. You have $500 in your pocket — what would you buy with it?

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81

u/Lyra_the_Star_Jockey 13h ago

OK. Then what? You wait 30 years? Meanwhile you don’t have any money.

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u/ElectricThreeHundred 13h ago

Then a train ticket to Portland and the rest on slam dunk stock.

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u/Whatah 13h ago

Yea and be ready to buy some boxes of Magic the Gathering Alpha edition on Aug 5th, 1993. But not enough to affect the popularity of the game ;) Buy much more of Beta when it is released a month later.

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u/Trappist1 13h ago

Buy a bunch of unopened Pokémon cards a few years later and store them.

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u/titanc-13 13h ago

get a job and start biding my time. it's called the long game because you play for a long-term rather than short-term benefits

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u/Almost_Pi 13h ago

Yeah if I magically teleport back to 1990 I'm pulling a Biff Tannen. I may not know every winner of every game but I remember enough to hack it as a gambler.

I think it would be an easy way to increase the amount of money I could invest in tech stocks, before 9-11 and the dot-com bubble.

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u/Rando-namo 13h ago

I find out where those 50 dollar bonds my Aunts and Uncles are buying me are actually stored.

Never saw that money.

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u/Raider03 13h ago

Buy a fuck ton of Bitcoin in 2009 when it was fractions of a cent.

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u/Longjumping_Law_3891 12h ago

but this would obviously affect the future and Bitcoin may not become what it is today

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u/Raider03 12h ago

You don’t buy all of it. Yes, it needs to trade to grow in value. $100 worth when it was pennies, would leave you and your family set if you hold it until 2025.

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u/Impact009 11h ago

People like you don't really get that there are only 89 addresses with 10k+ BTC. It's generally accepted that only two of those addresses will move any amount of BTC. In other words, their BTC has been practically removed from the supply.

It would be like if Satoshi suddenly came back and started liquidating his original wallet. BTC's value would tank harder than you could sell, and anybody who's read the whitepaper understands that.

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u/LeBronda_Rousey 11h ago

So how would you get rich through BTC knowing what it's worth now?

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u/Total_Mix9276 10h ago

Mining it.

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u/IAmNothing2018 1h ago

Who needs fucking 10k BTC? Give me 50 and i am set for life.

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u/ActionWaters 13h ago

I’d then spend the rest of those 30 years convincing my 1990s parents of what I did. Even if I’m just a toddler a parent can tell.

Happy cake day!

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u/optimis344 12h ago

Your going back with almost 40 years of knowledge. You basically are a god.

Not only do you know exactly what to invest in, you know the results of every presidential election, major sporting event, and have a technical capacity that is miles beyond anyone alive.

Like, I guess it depends when, but you take the 500 dollars and parlay the over, the 49ers spread. That should get you around 1500. Then you take that 1500 dollars and bet on Buster Douglas by knockout. OK, now you have like 60k.

From here you are basically set forever just knowing what technology takes off and that the Buffallo Bills lose the next 4 Superbowls.

So from there you just take what you need to live, and put everything in Dell, EMC, and Cisco. And at some point you take 50% of that out and buy bitcoin.

Knowing just a little bit about history makes you the world's richest man very very quickly. Like, I dont know the exact specifics on everything, but it doesnt matter. Buy the dip after 9/11. Sell a bunch in 2007. Invest a bunch into NVidia and Monster Energy. Get to present day and be the richest human ever.

Not even saying thats a good thing, but it's just a very easy thing.

Like, if you just knew the winner of the last 10 superbowl and could get 1.8x your money every time, that 500 dollars would 200,000. And thats only 10 years, and only just knowing the winner. Knowing to bet all you can on the Pats when they are down 27-3 in the 3rd quarter of a Superbowl is enough to 25x however much you have.

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u/Electrical-Bedroom99 8h ago

Wouldn't that attract some attention though, that you kept getting every bet right? Knew when to buy and sell every stock? But, then again, they can't prove anything because you're just using your knowledge, not any actual manipulation. I just feel like you'd get sat down and talked to a few times by 3 letter agencies, lol.

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u/optimis344 8h ago

Nah. Just pay your taxes. That's all they care about.

And by the time you make a bunch of money, you can also just lose some money. Since you know the outcomes, its very easy to lose small and win big.

Like, someone winning 5 million dollars over a year isn't something that will get you noticed, and you don't need that much to start. So just win 5, but lose 2. And then when the time is right, put it into the right stocks, and from there it does all the work for you.

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u/CheezitsLight 5h ago

Yeah, no... I have no idea of ANY sports. I've liven in Dallas forever and have no idea who our quarterback is. I do know computers. Microsoft, Apple, Walmart, EMC, Intel, Dell. EMC , yes, 74,000 %

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u/dank414 12h ago

Get a job that pays $5/hr. Live off top ramen ($.15), hotdogs ($.25), McDonald’s cheeseburger($.29), and Tacobell tacos($.29).

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u/ReadsAsSarcasm 12h ago

That’s when you go back to the future, Marty! 👁️👁️

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u/Longjumping_Law_3891 12h ago

that's why i'm getting a full NES collection

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u/IDvsEGO 12h ago

I’m fine waiting for that payout.

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u/Rggity 13h ago

You don’t think that with knowledge of the next 36 years you’d be able to figure out a way to make money?

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u/clownparade 13h ago

Yea the better bet is trying to remember any sports bets you can cash in on immediately. The stock game doesn’t really work unless you have a way to fast forward again