Update for Google Visitors: This post is getting a lot of traffic so I’m putting the current and historical conversion tools front and center to help you on your conversion quest:

XE – Universal Currency Converter

Historical currency rates with oanda.com

Today I was buying a license for gAttach, an amazing tool which allows you to send any item from Windows (PDF, Word document, picture, Snagit, basically anything with an “Email this”) to Gmail as an attachment. I promised Chris Wood the developer I would send a donation because he has created something unique and valuable. Donate here

As I went to checkout with Paypal, I noticed this disturbing conversion rate.

PayPal Conversion Rate as of Sep. 28, 2008: 1 U.S. Dollar = 0.529051 British Pounds

So I did some research because I don’t remember the dollar only being worth 50% of the Euro / pound. I looked up historical currency rates with oanda.com and here’s what I found

Conversion Table: USD to EUR (Interbank rate)
Time period: 09/22/03 to 09/28/08

Time period: 09/22/00 to 09/28/05

It seems that we first dipped under a 1:1 ratio 12/05/2002 with 0.99990

Does this mean that US items are now a bargain for European countries? Will tourism increase because it’s cheaper to take “holiday” in the United States?

Time period: 09/22/95 to 09/28/99

Photo Credit DanieVDM