Old time prices, now forgotten

[jnyork]

I recently scored a 1908 copy of the Sears Roebuck catalog from 1908, this is the 1970 reprint. Lots of fun reading , an insight into how people lived back then. If you lived in a small town or rural area that's how you got most of your supplies. Anyway, I got to looking at the guns and ammo.

Marlin 1897 lever action .22 for 15 bucks, as was the Winchester 1894 and other "modern" rifles. Trapdoor Springfield for $2.75, Stevens 44 for $8.25. $15.50 for Colt's Single Action Army. .22 LR smokeless ammo for $3.07 per 1000.

Keep in mind this in an era where labor was 1.00 a DAY, skilled workers might get 3.00 a DAY for 10 hour workday. So, your nice new firearm was a week's wages or more. About the same as today.

[gamekeeper]

I love looking through old gun catalogues, I would gladly pay more than todays prices for 1908 Quality.....

[AJMD429]

Yeah, the value of things stays very similar for the basics; sometimes technology changes enough to cause a blip.

The thing that changes is the value of money, which changes the 'price' of everything.

Money changes value because it is a thing that only has value because we say so. When it had the value of a certain amount of gold, the value of money remained just as stable as gold, which is usually pretty stable (in complete chaos water, food, and weapons rise in value and everything else drops). But now that the government figured out that it can manipulate social and political events easily by printing money and giving it to friendly individuals, then letting the resulting imbalance benefit those friends, and the resulting inflation essentially be a 'tax' levied without calling it a tax, 'money' is unpredictable in value (other than it is always decreasing).

Pretty soon the government hopes to have money all 'electronic' (just like voting), so it can be manipulated even more easily. Enemies could be demonetized instantly, as well.

Someday even without all the forces trying to mess things up, we would likely head into a chaotic environment once again where it is all about water, food, and weapons. Maybe not for a few generations, or maybe tomorrow, but either way, having some of the basics is a GOOD idea...

I like the nostalgia of the old drawings in catalogs, and the language you see in the advertisements. And it is fun to imagine what you could buy at those prices with the handfuls of money we now typically have relative to back then.

[FLINT]

When I was a kid, my grandpa gave me a really old sears and roebuck catalog. Don't remember what decade it was from. maybe the 20s? not sure now. I was maybe 10 years old at the time. I was always a gun nut, and enjoyed looking at all the old guns. the other thing that stuck in my memory were the mens underware that were wired to give electric shocks to your nads - or something like that. I always thought that was strange. I wonder what the point of that was?

I also think about how great it would be to be able to go back in time and buy some really great quality guns - but the problem is that I couldn't buy anything with the money I have now because its new money. I was thinking that maybe I'd have to take back some kind of gold or something that would have looked the same as it did back then.

[Rusty]

I'd love to have some of those old single shots.

[2ndovc]

My great grand father bought one of those Trapdoors for $ 2.75, it was .50 extra for the bayonet. Some years later my grandfather bought another for $12.00 with the bayonet. We still have both of them. About 15 years ago my dad bought a Trapdoor SRC for $800. The old single shots were a big influence growing up.

jb

[Ysabel Kid]

I love looking through old gun catalogues, I would gladly pay more than todays prices for 1908 Quality.....

+1 on both counts!

[Jay Bird]

Pretty soon the government hopes to have money all 'electronic' (just like voting), so it can be manipulated even more easily. Enemies could be demonetized instantly, as well.

Never gonna happen Doc.........TWO reasons......

There's a percentage of the population who cannot grasp electronic technology, either through their economics or intelligence.

The main reason.....EVERYONE in Congress along with 95% of lawyers in this country have safes in their house with stacks of Ben's.

As far as the Sears catalog is concerned ...I believe I've read that one and in it is a full engraved / inlaid single action Colt that's on sale at a giveaway price at a little over a hundred bucks.---6

[Twodot]

A trip to the outhouse wouldn't be the same without a Sears catalog.
..

[rossim92]

A trip to the outhouse wouldn't be the same without a Sears catalog.
..

or the funny papers!!!!!!!!

[daisygordoninc]

The thing I remember about the sears catalog was that all my friends at school had the same flannel shirts each fall,
we all ordered through the sears catalog, and there were only a few patterns.

[marlinman93]

I have an old Marlin dealer letter here with "specials" listed at discount prices to dealers. The guns listed are all special order guns that were either made for customers and then the order cancelled; or made with special features that nobody ever ordered exactly as they were configured. So Marlin would every couple years offer these discounted to get them out of the warehouse.
I look at the letterhead and the guns listed, and I think every collector today would love to have been able to buy any of them at Marlin's discounted price, even back then! One in particular is a factory engraved special order Rigby Ballard that has every feature upgraded from even the already highly embellished #6 1/2 Rigby. It lists the retail price originally at $95! And the discounted price is $55. Probably would be a $20,000+ rifle today if it was well cared for. The letter is from 1893, almost 3 years after Marlin ceased production of Ballard rifles.

[3leggedturtle]

I have a copy of the 2004 MidwayUSA catalog i look at for old rimes sake!