In the early days of automobiles, says Paradigm’s distinguished geologist Byron King, “cars were unusual, and expensive oddities. Both the customer base and distribution of cars was limited, if for no other reason than lack of roads and access to motor fuel.”

Byron notes even Henry Ford had to test “what people would or could buy,” pushing boundaries with his Model K — a six-cylinder roadster produced between 1906–1908.

Courtesy: Fountainhead Antique Auto Museum, Fairbanks, Alaska, BWK photo
Ford 1907 Model K Roadster

“[Ford] priced his Model K at $2,800 out of the factory gate, which was quite an ask in an era when the price of gold was $20 per ounce.”

Byron does the math: “Buying a Model K back then was equivalent to paying $462,000 today for a car. In other words, buying Ford’s Model K was the same payout as buying a house in many parts of the U.S. today.”

Your Rundown for Friday, August 1, 2025...

Lessons from Classic Cars and Gold

Predictably, Ford sold only about 900 Model Ks before realizing “the buyers weren’t there,” says Byron, “and the numbers didn’t work, which led Mr. Ford to rethink his price points and develop the less costly, but now iconic, Model T, a.k.a. Ford’s ‘car for the multitudes.’”

The Model T, powered by a four-cylinder engine, “was uncomplicated, [and] the car’s inner workings were generally understandable to both owners and mechanics.”

Byron admires the practical touch: “Ford’s first Model T cars were priced at $825 in 1908, or the modern equivalent of $136,125 in terms of the current price of gold.

“By 1916, Ford sold Model T cars for as little as $360, equivalent to $59,400 today.” This price drop, he points out, came from “economies of scale.” As a result, “by 1918 about half of all cars on the road in the U.S. were Model Ts.

“For many Americans in the 1910s, buying even Ford’s (relatively) low-cost Model T required the equivalent of a year’s wage for many working people,” while the most luxurious models “were destined only for the wealthiest of the era.”

Byron’s car price comparisons show how much the value of the U.S. dollar has dropped over the last century. When the dollar was tied to the gold standard, every dollar was backed by a set amount of gold. This system stopped inflation from getting out of control. But that changed in 1971 when Nixon ended the gold standard.

A dollar from the 1910s? Had roughly the same purchasing power as about $33.84 in 2025 — meaning prices today are about 33.8 times higher than they were over a century ago.

The lesson: “Preserve your purchasing power in every way possible over time. Because as [with] automobile sticker prices over the past century, inflation is a thief that never stops robbing you, burgling you, pickpocketing your ability to hang onto what you’ve earned.

“The best approach is to invest [ahead] of the problems coming down the road,” Byron adds, “and a big element of that is to preserve wealth via hard assets, especially physical gold and silver, plus mining investments in companies with ore deposits in the ground.”

Simply put: invest in things that hold value, and stay ahead of inflation.

Market Rundown for Friday, August 1, 2025

S&P 500 futures are down almost 1% to 6,315.

Oil is down 0.35% to $69 for a barrel of WTI.

The price of gold’s up 0.10% to $3,352.90 per ounce.

And Bitcoin’s pulled back 1.50% to $115,180.