Just a little mind blower for all of us to consider when we kvetch about “the high price of model railroading”. I’m reading a magazine from August 1939 and there’s an ad for a shop having a sale on “electric locos” (like New Haven or NYC types). $57.50 in 1939 for a factory worker or office clerk works out to about $2410.00 today!!! Admittedly this is a high end product for, as they say, “the discriminating enthusiast”, but durn that’s a lotta moola.
Lou
You should look at the catalogs at www.hoseeker.net. A single Lindsay 4-wheel power truck from 1953 was $16.50, or $132.95 in today’s dollars. That’s just for one small power truck, and about $45 more expensive than NWSL’s new Stanton drive trucks!
My guess is that when people gripe about this sort of thing they forget about massive inflation since they were young. You don’t have to be +60 either. Inflation has been growing at an astonishing rate, so even those that were young in the 90’s can remember “the good ole days”[:-^] In the May 1956 issue of Model Railroading, Fleischmann has an add for an HO BLW VO-1000 for $17.50, or $138 in todays terms. That was before DCC, sound or directional headlighting too.
Acela
Guys,Don’t forget even back in the 30s there was good paying union shops…That $58.00 would be equal to the price of a DCC/Sound equipped locomotive today…
In comparison that $58.00 would be food for a month or a mortgage payment.Remember a new Ford was around $700.00.
I’m remembering a certain period in the not so recent past that had interest rates in the 20% bracket and inflation running around 23%…[:-^]
Oh, you mean that summer when I bought my house, and my jaw dropped when I got a mortgage for 13.25%, because I’d been expecting 17%?
I’ve still got that house. We added a garage with a train room to it.
Last week, though, I picked up a Walthers Trainline GP9m (one they modified with a chopped nose) which was on sale for $39. I added a decoder from an engine I’d upgraded to sound. Sort of P1K detail level, but it runs great and pulls well. Some very light weathering, number boards and MU hoses and this will look like a first-class locomotive.
How does $57.50 in 1939 work out to $2410? According to the BLS inflation calculator, the current equivialent is $930.37. You must have used a calculator that included comparative average wages as well as cost of living calculations.
Just using the BLS site, Varney Super Pacific kit in 1950 cost the equivalent of $536.50 in today’s dollars (57.50 then) and that was a kit that didn’t include a tender. You could buy it in 4 separate assemblies rather than buying the whole thing all at once, but still… The Varney Casey Jones kit in 1950 went for the equivalent of $205.31.
The Lionel scale Hudson, which, IIRC, was released in 1937, cost $75, the equivalent of $1171.39 and Mantua had an RTR (more or less) train set that included a 2-8-0, 2 gondolas and a caboose which sold for $59.50 or the equivalent of $929.30.
Going the other way, a $35.00 RTR car would be the equivalent of $2.24 in 1937 and the BLI GS-4 at $449.99 MSRP today is selling for the 1937 equivalent of $28.81. In 1950 prices, it would be ove $9 cheaper than the Varney Pacific mentioned above AND it would have a tender, be painted and make sound.
EDIT: Whoops, typo. That should be $48.81 in 1950 prices for the BLI GS-4,
Andre
We model at different scales and levels to meet our incomes.
This baby is a beautiful, but at this time, too much for my hobby budget.
Any guess at what this sweet 4-4-0 might run?
[8D]
Anybody (beside me) priced present-day Tenshodo locos (HOj scale, 1:80.) Let’s just say that $3K would NOT cover shipping, handling, customs and currency exchange!
As for the original question - “As much as I’m willing to pay, and not one Kopeck more!”
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
My guess: around $1500 (or about $96.04 in 1937 dollars).
Interesting that the project is being sponsored by a Swede and the loco will be built by a Swedish company. No reason that couldn’t be done here other than the fact that no one seems to be sufficiently motivated to do so.
Andre
Better figure on something like $ 1,200 to $ 1,500 for Brimalm´s 4-4-0. Brimalm is a renowned company, making models of museum quality. Handcrafted in Sweden has a price tag, but it´s worth it!
Content removed due to a completely fucked up and incompetent Kalmbach customer service.
Acela026, that guy in your cartoon looks more like Malcom Furlow than St. Peter. “Is this Heaven . . .? Or, somewhere else . . .?” ;-}
Tom
It does little good to try to “comparison shop” for prices at differing “era” points. SOme seemed outrageous at teh time, others were right in line, others still a bargain…
Some of the calculators I have seen for these type of things often don’t what was going on at the time into consideration. High inflation in the late 70s, for example can make a loco look relatively cheap or relatively expensive.
The prices of the past are almost always lower than today and can often look like a bargain, yet at teh time it was hiway robbery.
A car for $2,500 new? Oh, if only that were true today. In the last year Used car prices have gone up and so, too, some new cars as due to the earthquake in Japan. One may actually get MORE out of a used vehicle than one paid for it 4 years ago now. It is hard to wrap our heads around the fact that tha may have been the average wages for a year, just like $15k-$20K may be now, and one can still buy a new car in that price range. In 1976 my parents bought a new luxury van.In the late 80’s, early 90’s my mother stalled on buying a new one to replace the aging one as My mother said she had trouble wrapping her head around paying more for a vehicle than they paid for the house!! {that would have been in 1967 when they bought the house}
I have always evaluated what a price is in the current and stick to whether I can afford that now, not in the future or in the past. It does no good to lament.
The prices seem to have jumped up drastically in the past 2-3 yrs in MRRing. SO too, everything else.
Gas prices are so much higher due to speculators, whom I am sure sit around and say “I bet we can get more out of the USA people if we make it another dollar more” and proceed to make it go up to a hihger price than they wanted, to get it dropped when people start to protest and buy less gas, then they let it reduce to a new high with new Mega profits for the oil company. An oil company is a good stock to invest in if htey pay out dividends based o