Education wing · by Coldie
How much buying power has the dollar lost over time?
Measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index, the dollar has lost roughly 97% of its 1913 purchasing power: a 1913 dollar's buying power is about 3 cents in today's terms. The erosion never needed a crisis. A dollar from 2000 has lost close to half its buying power; even a dollar from 2013 buys about a quarter less than it did new. Every bill in this collection carries its own version of this number on its specimen page.
Pick a year and see what a dollar from it is worth now:
The chart is not adjusted, dramatized or extrapolated: it is the Consumer Price Index (CPI-U, 1982-84 = 100) published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the same index this collection uses to compute each bill's "spending power" stat. The 2026 value is an estimate pending final figures.
Two honest footnotes. First, this is inflation doing what fiat systems allow it to do slowly, not hyperinflation, which is a technical term for runaway price collapse the United States has never experienced. Second, wages and interest also change over time; purchasing power of a stored bill is the fair comparison here because these particular dollars were, literally, stored.
Which brings us to the joke buried in this collection: these 64 bills lost value twice. Once to the index, invisibly, like every dollar. And once to water, dirt and mold, visibly, which is the only reason anyone is looking at them.
Related questions
What is the CPI?
The Consumer Price Index, published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, tracks the average price of a fixed basket of goods and services over time. It is the standard yardstick for US inflation.
Has the US ever had hyperinflation?
No. Hyperinflation is a technical term for extreme runaway inflation (often defined as 50% or more per month). The dollar's story is slow, compounding erosion, which is dramatic over a century without ever being hyperinflation.
Does money in a bank lose value the same way?
Purchasing power erodes wherever the money sits unless interest earned keeps pace with inflation. A buried box earns nothing, which makes it the cleanest possible demonstration.
Where do the collection's per-bill numbers come from?
Each specimen page compares its series year's CPI with today's, the same data as this chart, to show what that bill's dollar could still buy if it had stayed spendable.
The doorway
Everything on this page is illustrated with real dollars that spent two years underground.
See what nature made of themSOURCES · BLS: Consumer Price Index · UPDATED 2026-07-05