In the early 1920’s Germany experienced one the worst cases of hyperinflation the world had ever seen. In just 4 short years, one oz of gold went from 170 German Marks to 87,000,000,000,000 German Marks. Yes, you read that right, 87 TRILLION.
Now, the price of gold didn’t magically increase that much. What did happen, is that the value of the German Mark decreased so much, it took 87 TRILLION times as many German Marks to buy the same amount of gold one could by just 4 years earlier.
One famous story goes…
A factory worker went to the store to buy some bread. At that time it literally cost an entire wheelbarrow full of cash to buy just one loaf of bread. The factory worker parked his wheelbarrow full of cash in front of the store while he went shopping. When he returned to his wheelbarrow, the wheelbarrow was gone, and all that was left was the pile of cash.
