Experiment 03 · Data Story
Gold Up, Money Down: What 100 Dollars Still Buy
100 dollars stay 100 dollars – but what do they buy? Choose a start and an end year and every chart recalculates: the purchasing power of fixed cash in four currencies, the gold price, 17 goods in three yardsticks, a start-year × end-year matrix, luxury goods and paintings. Each chart comes with a 'What you see' box written in plain language, including the periods where gold loses. The app is in German.
What you can explore
One circle, one century, every country
Filter by time window
Start and end year sliders plus quick presets; dollar, franc, mark/euro and gold lines can be toggled.
Honest counterexamples
1980–2000 gold lost 78 % of its purchasing power; the franc gained after 2000; the same Rolex needed 9 % more gold in one month.
Explained in plain words
Every chart generates a 'What you see' text from the numbers of the chosen window, with a table view for every value.
- years, 1960–2025
- 66
- goods in three yardsticks
- 17
- annual data points checked
- 1,307
- luxury models and art indices
- 5 + 2
The AI use case
How we built it with AI, step by step
From an audit brief to a live app: every figure was recomputed from unrounded raw data and spot-checked against the primary source.
Independent audit
1,307 annual rows, 66 gold/FX years and 113 CPI years were checked for uniqueness, units and sources; all claimed results reproduced to six decimals.
Primary sources opened
FRED, BLS, World Bank and manufacturer price lists were read directly for the key anchors: CPI, gold, exchange rates, houses, cars, watch, yacht and helicopter.
Window analysis
Purchasing power of a fixed holding for every start/end year combination since 1960 – the basis for the heat map and the 10/20-year statistics.
Interactive app
A dependency-free page with SVG charts, tooltips, table views, dark mode and generated explanations; a 12-page PDF report for printing.
Sources and licences
US consumer prices: BLS CPI-U, annual averages (2025: 11 published months). Gold: World Bank Pink Sheet. Exchange rates: OECD via FRED.
Goods: Census/HUD (new houses), Destatis (building land), IDEX (diamonds), BLS consumer and import price indices. Luxury: Bavaria, Robinson, Porsche and Volkswagen price lists and press releases, Rolex price reports.
Art: Mei & Moses (2002), American Economic Review, Table A1; Artmarket.com/Artprice press releases 2021–2026.
Download the full report (PDF, 12 pages, German). Cash means a fixed amount without interest; gold before storage costs, taxes and spreads. No investment advice.
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