While I have a lot of experience in the financial markets I still had to do a lot of research to back up what I wrote in this story. The value of Gold and Silver was one of those areas.
Our intrepid hero, Z. Narrater, brought some of his winnings with him when he jumped time but since he didn't know he was going to do the time warp he didn't bring it all. He ends up with 200oz of Gold and 400oz of silver; a whole ton of wealth it would seem based on current day prices.
The problem is that during the 1820's gold prices were fixed at the international level (blame/thank Sir Isaac Newton). Regardless of that prices of the metal fluctuated wildly on the frontier and local inflation was more related to availability of goods than gold price. For example steak was cheap in Texas but hyper expensive in NYC and vice versa for gold.
Gold prices were fixed but their value versus the price of goods was not and that is important. Charts are available which help explain it more fully but by my calculation the localized value of Z. Narrater's nuggets is about $1.5~2 million in todays dollars. It's not the fortune he left behind but none of us would turn it down.
Silver follows the same trend, in 1820 it basically cost you 16oz of Silver to get 1oz of gold. Again there has been historical fluctuation of values but up until we went all free market in the 1960's & 1970's that had all been pretty standard since the days of the Greeks.
Another important point of consideration is that the Panic of 1819 had just occurred and the valuation of everything was wildly out of whack. What caused that economic catastrophe isn't important to us but what is important in this context is how it impacted the value of his holdings.
Please comment as you like, this is still the first draft of the story and I may adjust things on the rewrite.
(Charts available on Patreon or you can simply search the internet for Gold vs CPI.)