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How much stuff used to cost?

jdm
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jdm Distinguished Member

jdm

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I love this old ad that I keep in the bathroom. 

Small at the bottom it says copyright 1947, 50c was like $5.62 of today, but now we can buy 3 for a dollar.

Makes Dyson envious... 

DSC_0254_copy_648x1152.thumb.jpg.35e7f0f196e68e4224abc00c93a072ad.jpg

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spectre6000 Distinguished Member

spectre6000

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I like stuff like this. I have frame with a half dozen magazine ads for a classic car I've had a few of. It's not currently hanging anywhere (we took everything down to paint the walls and haven't hung anything back up yet). Cars used to be WAY cheaper. There also used to be a lot less to them. But then there was a lot more manual labor and handwork involved... The way all of that plays together has always been a fruitful subject for idle thoughts. A toothbrush sort of breaks it all though. It's a cheap thing without much complication or moving parts. Why was it MORE expensive then than now?

I dabble in a lot of "old" things, and I used to have a currency converter app on my phone that converted over time. It was deprecated, and I got a new phone... Now I have to do it the old fashioned way in a browser...

nickelsilver Distinguished Member

nickelsilver

Posted
Posted

I remember my dad saying he got Mad magazine for 25c when he was a kid; this was the early 80s and he got those in the mid 50s, they were 2 dollars when I was a kid. That was my mental conversion then.

A few years back I found a small notebook in a fleamarket with pay rates per day for watchmakers in Switzerland; it was from the 50s. I did a lot of searching converting francs over time and kept coming up with low figures, like no way they made so little. Was talking with a slightly elder watchmaker friend who's a bit of a historian, he told me how it was. Back then Switzerland made a lot of stuff, very well, and it wasn't cheap, but they didn't make much on it nonetheless 50-60 years ago. 6 day work weeks, 10-14 hour days, and what blew my mind- about half one's earnings went to food. Food was damn expensive.

It really made a mark on me; when I see an A. Schild blah blah movement from 1955 with mirror polished screws, mirror polished pinions that rival Patek, ratchet and crown wheels that are so beautiful with swirls and cupped mirror polish, and it was a cheap-ish movement then, and Patek's pinions are less good now- argh I get worked up. It's probably why I make a lot of parts for watches where I don't tell the owner they were broken because they'd refuse the true cost of the repairs. Those old movements were made with real skill and pride and almost out of desperation, but no corners cut; they all deserve to keep ticking.

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KarlvonKoln Distinguished Member

KarlvonKoln

Posted
Posted (edited)
4 hours ago, nickelsilver said:

A. Schild blah blah movement from 1955 with mirror polished screws, mirror polished pinions that rival Patek, ratchet and crown wheels that are so beautiful with swirls and cupped mirror polish, and it was a cheap-ish movement then...Those old movements were made with real skill and pride and almost out of desperation, but no corners cut; they all deserve to keep ticking.

It made a mark on me too.  It's why, if I stumble upon a particularly well-crafted movement in a really nice watch that is advertised as "non-running" or "for parts", I try to procure it and restore it. Before scrappers come to get it, if I can.  They'll just melt the case and sell the movement for jewelry parts. So many were beautiful works of art, as well as marvelous mechanisms for their time.  And the craftsmanship that went into them!  It so very different from the computer-designed components we see today.  Computers do not have an eye for aesthetics.  But long ago, humans were combining aesthetics and accuracy in lovely ways.  And some of those artisans struggled to keep bread and cheese on their table.

Edited by KarlvonKoln
Edited for clarity
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