As its central feature, a bimetallic standard grants nominal debtors an option to deliver either of two metals. With results from the option pricing literature, construction of a formula to evaluate the bimetallic option in debt instruments is straightforward. With this formula, one can compute the option value in a wide range of nineteenth-century U.S. Treasury securities. Posession of the option values permits an adjustment of the yields on U.S. securities to make them comparable to yields on nonmetallic European securities. Evaluating the option allows the estimation of transfers from debtors to creditors.

A bimetallic standard grants nominal debtors an option to deliver either of two metals. Construction of theoretical bimetallic option values allows the computation of the option value implicit in nineteenth-century U.S. securities. Appropriate yield adjustments permit a comparison of U.S. and monometallic European security yields. Yields on antebellum U.S. securities are close to British yields. Evaluating the option also allows the estimation of wealth transfers from shifts in the monetary standards during the nineteenth-century silver agitation.