For the TV it is the second scenario you explained. It’s like you are renting it based on its overall price. For the gold, it is not yours, you can have any amount for a price negotiated by the seller. Then, it disappears OR you have one dollar’s worth of gold. Essentially the gold would be useless to rent so save up money each day and then buy the gold to keep. You are basically never really buying anything of value just renting it for whatever the seller decides is a fair amount of time worth a dollar. To illustrate, Rent a center could charge you to use a TV by the day, week, month and you make payments until you own it. The difference here is you don’t rent to own, but the calculations are the same. If they charge 100 per month to rent something you have one 1/100th of that month. But the dollar is mysterious so you could theoretically ask the magic dollar to just have the TV or gold appear for whatever is a fair amount of time to use it for. You can do the calculations or just see what the dollar calculates is fair. But if you want to keep the gold, it is 1 dollar of gold. And if you want to keep a TV, it is however big a one dollar TV could be. It’s magic, it defies normal conventions. You could ask to have one dollar’s worth of a gourmet meal if you want and it appears.