Wait, The Gilded Age’s Jack Made How Much For His Clock?

Spoilers follow for “Marriage Is a Gamble,” episode four of The Gilded Age’s third season.

Breaking news from 1883, a.k.a. this week’s episode of The Gilded Age: John “Jack” Trotter (Ben Ahlers) is rich, baby! The Van Rhijn house footman finally sold the patent for a new alarm clock he invented back in season two. And not only did he and business partner Larry Russell (Harry Richardson) sell the patent and clock “lock, stock, and barrel,” they made a wild-even-for-2025 $600,000. If six honey buns’ worth of cashola is a lot today, it has to be an even more bonkers amount in the late 19th century.

And yes, indeed it is a life-changing amount for the young (soon to be former?) footman. But how much money was $600,000 in 1883? Would an alarm-clock manufacturer really pay that much for a patent? Is Jack now the richest person on The Gilded Age, able to out–Train Daddy George Russell (Morgan Spector) himself? Don’t worry, we’ve got all the historical answers to your questions about Jack’s fat stacks, as well as an answer to the most important question: Will he be able to get a box at the opera?

So how rich is Jack in 2025 dollars?
This is actually slightly tricky to calculate because the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ official inflation calculator only goes back to 1913, which you probably don’t need a calculator to figure out is 30 years after the events of The Gilded Age. Going from January 1913 to May 2025 (the widest range available) nets Jack and Larry $19,681,530.61.

Meanwhile, using a janky online calculator that purports to show 1883 to 2025, we get a net sum of $19,096,930.69. Why less? Likely because inflation began rising precipitously starting in 1870, spiked highest around 1913, and then plunged again during a little thing called the Great Depression.

So the answer is not exact, and presumably Jack will make further investments to grow his wealth, but at the end of “Marriage Is a Gamble,” Jack owns 50 percent of that money. To round off for ease, let’s say he’s worth at least $9.5 million in 2025 dollars.

Would someone really pay that much for an alarm clock?
On the other side of the equation is the proud new owner of a baby clock patent, Mr. Weston (John Ellison Conlee). Would he pay $600,000 for an improvement on something that already existed? Well, in 1862, Hymen L. Lipman sold a patent to Joseph Reckendorfer for a lead-based pencil with an eraser on it for $100,000 … which proved to be a bad investment, because after Reckendorfer sued a company for a similar design, the Supreme Court ruled that sticking a thing that previously existed on another thing that previously existed was not inventing a new thing (note: not actual legal language).

Look, the Gilded Age was an era of wild innovation, introducing everything from the telephone and incandescent lightbulb to automobiles and Kodak cameras. Perhaps this is hindsight, but if creating a pencil with an eraser on it led to a contested patent, would an improvement on the already existing alarm clock spur on a purchase price of $600,000? Particularly compared to $100,000 for the erasered pencil? Perhaps Jack’s invention really is that amazing, but from our 2025 view, it seems like a big leap. Only Mr. Weston and Julian Fellowes know for sure.

How many alarm clocks will need to be sold to make back that whopper of an investment?
“You know you intend to make many times that,” Larry says when he counters an offer of $400,000 with the final $600,000. “I suspect you’ve already discussed this figure?”

So will Weston, in fact, make many times that? Er … maybe? In the 1870s, alarm clocks were going for about $1.50 each. They had just been introduced in America after Seth E. Thomas patented his version in 1876 and were the new hot thing. But Weston would need to sell 400,000 alarm clocks just to make his investment back, not including manufacturing and other fees. That said? People love alarm clocks, and given the “next big thing” nature of purchasing in the time period, it’s possible that consumers would ditch their current clock for a better one.

There are two little twists here, though. The first is that Weston could be buying the patent not to make alarm clocks, but to buy and resell the patent to someone else for even more money … It’s an investment in the piece of paper, not the invention. The other is that in 1890, the price of wristwatches dropped to $1. So if they do want to make those clocks, they better get on it ASAP.

How much was Jack likely making as a footman?
Thanks to this Reddit thread and the book Millionaire Households and Their Domestic Economy, we know that around 1903, a chef at an upper-tier New York house was paid around $100 a month, and a housekeeper would get $50–$150 a month. On the lower end, a dining-hall maid got $20–$30 a month, while a “Useful Man,” which was a jack-of-all-trades (no pun intended), got $30–$40 a month. Around the same time period, albeit across the ocean on PBS’s Manor House, a first footman would get £26 a month.

To throw out an estimate based on this, we can say Jack could have been making anywhere from $20 to $40 a month. But that’s also based on numbers from 20 years later, so it may be less than that.

So how many men can Jack, a footman, hire to be his footmen?
If Jack hires 10,000 footmen at $30 a month, he would blow through his money immediately. As his financial advisers, we do not recommend this course of action.

Is Jack richer than Aunt Ada? How about George and Bertha?
Larry specifically notes that Jack is “almost as rich as Mrs. Forte, and much richer than Mrs. Van Rhijn,” so that sort of settles that. Ada Forte (Cynthia Nixon) inherited an unknown sum of money from her late husband, which we now know is north of $300,000 — but clearly not that far north. As for Agnes Van Rhijn (Christine Baranski), she lost all of her money last season, so that’s not a great comparison point; Larry is just being mean.

However, Jack is nowhere near the top echelons of society. The Russells are loosely based on the Vanderbilts, who were the 1880s equivalent of billionaires — same with the Astors (who were real). Jack is just a lowly millionaire in today’s numbers, though you can still call him Clock Daddy if you want.

How many opera tickets can Jack afford now?
The most important question: Can Jack get a box at the Met? If Bertha (Carrie Coon) even wants to allow him to purchase one, and one is available … Yes, he technically could afford it, as in 1883, each box cost about $1,200 a season. That said, the wealth level of those who purchased those boxes was beyond Jack’s new money: The “poorest” person with a box was estimated to be worth around $450,000, while the average wealth was around $6 million. Time to start inventing more clocks, Jack!