A little trip through time

[KCSO]

Gun Digest Reloading section for 65-66...

Hercules Powder Co introduces a new line of powders called ReloadeR, the #7 is intended for the older cartridges, 38-55, 45-70 ect...

Santa Anita Engineering Co (SAECO) is now offering bullet molds made on the old Cramer pattern...

Lee Engineering adds pistol calibers to their Lee Loading tool lineup...

Herter's Perfect Automatic die sets offer in line seating...

RCBS offeres their new 300 grain bullet and powder scale at $19.95...

Savage branches out into reloading with their new 730 reloading press...

By the time you read this Saeco will have thier new sizing dies on the market, they arte the smoothest we have yet seen...

Green Dot powder, a new shotgun propellant is introduced this year...

P.O. Ackley has added a hundred page supplement to his relaoding book issued first in 1962...

Lyman Gun Sight Co is offering new die sets for just $13.95 ...

Mec introduces the 600 Jr. shotshell press...

Potter Engineering introduces a line of lead melting furnaces starting at just $24.95...

[redneckdan]

If only I could go back in time with a handful of C-notes:roll:

[Scrounger]

If only I could go back in time with a handful of C-notes:roll:

Go back any distance at all and that money would be considered counterfeit. First I thought to suggest taking 20 dollar gold pieces, but they're too expensive now, were a lot cheaper and more available 40 years ago. You need to convert your cash into something that was available then but has become a lot cheaper now. Nothing comes to mind at the moment....

[redneckdan]

Go back any distance at all and that money would be considered counterfeit. First I thought to suggest taking 20 dollar gold pieces, but they're too expensive now, were a lot cheaper and more available 40 years ago. You need to convert your cash into something that was available then but has become a lot cheaper now. Nothing comes to mind at the moment....



had to go and burst my bubble, eh? How bought blue prints for a gun that hadn't been invented yet?

[Scrounger]

Gun? How about car or computer or some other electronic dodad. We know the schematic for a PlayStation 20-25 years ago would be worth a fortune; but no one then would think so, they'd say no one would buy it. That's what I would have said. Best deal might be to just take whatever you can rake up in old money and invest it in stocks you know are going through the roof. I was making $2.00 an hour when the '63 Dodgers swept the Yankees in the Series... and I had it! I put $2.00 on them to sweep and they did, I won maybe $20 which was a good bit in those days. Probably lasted me an hour or so in the casino when I celebrated. Ah, the follies of youth. Why do they waste it on the young and ignorant?

[nvbirdman]

Televisions are dirt cheap now, and were rather expensive in the past. BTW reloading dies haven't gone up much have they?

[454PB]

I'm always telling my wife that guns are one of the few things you can buy, enjoy all your life, and when you go toes up......they are worth more than you paid for them. She just kinda rolls her eyes.....

[NVcurmudgeon]

Scrounger, in 1973 I was in Mexico with my roomie. I brought a lot of cash, and Terry put big expenses on his card. When we were checking out of a very fancy hotel in Guaymas, the manager looked horrified because one of the twenties I had given Terry did not say "in God we trust." The manager said "this is counterfeit, Senores." I looked at the bill, smiled and gave Terry a replacement. When we got outside I told Terry that the bill was series 1952, just before the Eisenhower administration got in and added "in God we trust" to US currency. I did not wish to explain that to the hotel manager, not be believed, and see a Mexican jail from the inside!

[Buckshot]

...............Speaking of money. When we drove over to Sierra Vista, AZ to visit the folks my dad happened to mention you should be able to get a couple gallons of gas for 35 cents. I said, "Huh?". He said sure, if you had a silver quarter and dime with the current price of silver they'd be worth about $6.

I could just see you walking in and giving Haseem $2.40 in silver change for a $36 tab on the pump. Of course that wouldn't work because there is no concept of real money anymore and the stuff we use might as well be seashells or pretty rocks. People take it because they know they can give it to someone else for stuff and THEY'LL take it.

But back on topic, it is true that lots of reloading stuff is a good value these days. Probably some of that has to do with how efficiently it may be made in these days of computer controlled production and new manufacturing processes. The price for 22RF ammo these days is just unbelievable in how comparatively inexpensive it is. It's only just about doubled in the past 36 years.

One other thing too and thanks to the American farmer food still remains an excellent value. Well milk prices kind of went crazy but for the most part food is still cheap.

....................Buckshot

[Bret4207]

I'd take back about 1,000 $5.00 solar power calculators, about 100 cordless drills with chargers and 50 walkmans with CD's. Selling all that stuff to industry would probably get me all the guns, cars and property I could want.

[wills]

When I was in undergraduate school, in 74, I worked in an office supply business and a four function calculator sold for about $120 and was as big as a package or cigarettes, or bigger, and heavy. The store manager would not stock many of them because he figured the price would drop to about $10 someday and we would be stuck with them. Now you can get a solar four function at Wal*Mart for $1.

[KCSO]

Technology is no answer as to what to take back. The Indians wanted metal tools, but until they could learn to forge and work iron their culture was mearly dependant. If you took the transistor to 1930 no one would be able to reproduce it and it wold be a lone curiosity in a world of tubes. A solar calculator would get you tortured for the secret to alien technology that YOU couldn't give.

As to how cheap everything was or wasn't In 1965 I was making between 50 and 75 cents an hour. I saved my nickles and dimes for months to buy a Remington 22 and anything but a surplus highpower rifle was a dream. That $40 dollar press was 1/2 the cost of a good rifle and $13.00 dies would be like $50.00 dies now days. Gold has maintained what is close to a constant value since about the 1880's in the in 1880 a $20.00 gold piece would buy you a good revolver and it will do the same today.

[felix]

The factory that makes the boats in Venice still charges a certain amount of gold per boat (gondola). The price has not CHANGED since the time of the Roman Empire. ... felix

[DLCTEX]

In 1954-55 we would make a 25 mile trip to a little country store to buy 22l.r. for 50 cents a box. shorts were 35. Other stores were about 70 cents for l.r. and 55 for shorts. That community was having a population expolsion of rabbits, and there were organised Rabbit drives to reduce their numbers, but the rabbits kept getting ahead. We hunted them at night with a spotlight, the wheat fields were literally covered. Many times we would kill 200-300 a night. Fed them to a neighbors hogs. He had about 100 hogs in a pasture and they learned to come running when we backed up to the fence. Seeing what they did to the rabbits, I would shudder at thoughts of falling in that pen. Anyway, makes the cost of l.r. at wally world seem a tremendous bargin.

[D.Mack]

ksco an interesting note on tecnology. If you were to take a transister back to the thirties, it would be out dated, as sim -conducter development was killed by the invention of the vacumb tube. Transistors as we know them were in use in the 1890's, but when vacumb tubes were developed, the were more relable and easier to make, so transistor development was delayed by 50 years.DM

[6pt-sika]

The first high powered rifle I ever bought was a new Remington 700BDL in 243 . When I bought it in 1973 it cost me $174.00 . Same rifle now is close to $600 .
I was 12 at the time and worked all summer to make enough for that with scope and a walnut stocked new Ruger 10/22. The 10/22 was $59.95 . Back then I got a Bushnell Scopechief IV 2.5-8x for $39.99 .

[KCSO]

I have tried many times to work figure the purchasing power of the dollar at other times in history and have always run into a stone wall. As society and the needs of the individual change so does the dollar. Yes 30 dollars a month in 1880 doesn't sound like a lot of money, but No telephone bills, no car insurance and no car either, no medical insurance, no electric bill... So at the end of the month if you still had $2.00 left over were you better off than now days when you still have X amount left to charge on your credit card. The closest correlation that can be made is to pick and item and figure how many hours you would need to work to get that item. Say a Colt revolver costs $20 in 1880 and you had to work 120 hours to get that money and today the same gun costs $900.00 and you have to work ??? Then you run into the Aluminum factor, at one time aluminum was the most expensive metal in the world, now it is the cheapest. There just is no good way to correlate these things. Its just fun to look back and think that at sometime in the past folks didn't have our problems, even if it may not be true.

[Buckshot]

.................You have to remember too that back then people did not have the taxes that we do today. What money you made you kept. There was no income tax, no sales tax, no capitol gains tax, no federal excise tax, no disability or social security, etc, etc & etc.

I read once a paper on the taxes that directly affected a person in the 1930's vs the taxes we have today. Then the difference in effect between taxes we did have then, and still have now. The income tax is the one major tax common to 1930 and now that has had the greatest effect.

If people only knew what it was costing them to have the government take care of them.

..................Buckshot