Here’s another character for my contemporary fiction setting! Just a quick idea I had.
“Hey, Dionysus, I forget, what did you curse that king with that one time?” “Who, Midas? Here, let me show you. See that guy over there?” Gordon Samson half heard this conversation as he passed by the patio of a cafe, not paying attention as he headed home after a long day at his job. He felt something strike him in the back, but wrote it off. The only time he figured out something was wrong was when his silver cigarette lighter turned to gold in his hands, including the fuel. Smart enough to remember his Greek history class, Gordon verified his new power with a few tests. A pebble from the ground, a discarded gum wrapper, a pair of shoes… Everything he touched with his bare hands turned to gold.
Fortunately for Gordon, Dionysus’ demonstration of his curse only grazed him, and so only his bare hands turned stuff to gold. So he bought thick gloves, made sure he could still eat, and thought about his new ability. Vaguely remembering his high school economics class, Gordon realized that simply creating and selling gold would destroy the economy. And so he tried to think of what he could do to abuse this power. And he eventually came up with an idea. He could start making statues.
He and a sculptor friend started advertising that they could create golden statues to specification, be they the size of action figures or the size of a company founder. They realized that they could sell cheaper than anyone else by building a statue in out of cement or stone, and simply have him convert it to gold once they were finished, thus giving them a cheap way to sell these statues. And since the customer wouldn’t know they were using stone as a base, they could make a lot of money very quickly. Whenever he isn’t making statues, he now spends his time getting to know the magical community, loving his new life as a supernatural philanthropist of sorts.