Yesterday's gun and ammo prices in today's dollars

[John Sukey (Deceased)]

I have a Mk1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and several 6's
and other Webleys
NOW oddly enough the Mk1 and Mk2 are antiques, but the later ones are not.
Our wonderful gubmint thinks the later models are "unsafe" and sez we can't import them cause they don't have a "safety mechanism" Guess the Brits were using unsafe guns through WW2.
Now the test is to drop a cocked revolver ten feet onto a concrete floor. How many Colt single actions could pass that test???? But then the Colts are not them "UNSAFE furrin" guns.

[fyrfinder]

Prices of days gone by .... Yeah, know that feeling. In the early sixties 1911's were a dollar a caliber... Had a 35 dollar luger around that time too. Picked up a nice Dakota 22 revolver for 35 .. and carbines were 50 dollars on up. But then gas was the same price as a pack of cigarettes ... 18 cents. Had my eye on a nice 1928 Thompson for 1,700 just before the gun ban kicked in .. noticed now they shot up to ten times as much. Before the amnesty I know someone that picked up a nice 28' Thompson in LA and registered when he was abe to. Paid 200 in LA .. I think the price has gone up on most everything.

[Bob Womack]

.30-06 ball non corrosive per 20 today's dollars: $31.70

Wow! I'm glad ammo is relatively cheaper these days.

[Jim K]

A couple of years ago, I did some research comparing prices for the 1880-1910 era (when prices in gold dollars were relatively stable) with current dollars. My conclusions (not always in agreement with an official figure) was a 1 to 40 ratio in dollars. An English pound, equivalent to $4.80 in that era, was equivalent to about $200 today. In places where the currencies were in use together, as on transatlantic liners, one pound was equal to five dollars, and the gold sovereign (one pound coin) was close to the same size as the five dollar gold piece.*

So a Colt SAA that sold for $16 in 1890 would sell for $640 today, reason enough why every man west of the Mississippi didn't carry one on his hip, Hollywood notwithstanding. Even those $2-$4 Suicide Specials cost $80-160 in todays dollars.

As for wages, a common laborer got the equivalent of $40 a day, a cowboy $20, a private soldier $20, a skilled workman $80, a skilled and experienced factory worker $120-160. In 1914, Ford made history by paying his workers $5 per day ($200 equivalent).

*English writers of historical fiction especially seem ignorant of money in their chosen eras. In recent "historical" novels, one writer had his character "toss a sovereign" to a shoe shine boy, another had "a wallet stuffed with twenty pound notes", and a third paid ten pounds for a restaurant meal. Some restaurant!

Jim

[Dave_n]

Jim: I can testify to the differences in the dollar versus the pound even as late as 1968. PhD chemist, Post-doc in UK, 1100 Pounds pa. Same post-doc in USA in 1968 (a few months later) $8,500 pa. Boy, did I think that I had struck gold!! Bear in mind this was pre-UK inflation. Dave_n

[DaveHH]

I was a Telephone lineman in 1964 and was paid $55 a week. In the Army as an E4, I got $55 a month combat pay $14? overseas pay and with pay it was $167 a month. When I was a kid in the 60s I worked for $1 an hour and was making huge money as a cement laborer at $3.47 an hour in 1963 which was more than a journeyman carpenter at the time (better union). We used to buy .22 shorts for 52 cents a box and 22LR for 72 cents a box. Gas was about 25 cents a gallon, white pump standard premium was 57 cents a gallon. A pair of Levis was about $4 and most important, a six pack of Oly half quarts was $1.75. You could go to your local bar and drink all night for $10, get into your car and drive home. Things were very different then.

During the war, my father was an experimental mechanic at Lockheed, working in what would later be "The Skunk Works", he made about $3500 a year in 1943.
He built parts for the Lightning and spent most of the war on the Neptune long range patrol bomber, they called it "The Blue Ox" while developing it.

[Jim K]

In a 1903 catalog, 9mm Luger ammo (presumably imported) sold for $2.50 per 100. At a 40::1 conversion to today's dollars, that is $100. I have seen similar high prices for ammo in other old catalogs, but can't lay my hands on them right now. IIRC, prices equivalent to $40-60 a box of 50 were common for center fire revolver cartridges.

Hi, DaveHH,

I was giving the modern equivalents. The actual pay for a a cowboy or a soldier was $.50 a day, but they got "room and board"*. A laborer got $1 a day, a skilled worker $2. My grandfather and great uncle were stonemasons; in 1900, a master mason got $2.50 a day, a journeyman $1.50-2.00.

An odd variation from our common belief is that few cowboys carried guns; an SAA cost over a month's pay and many ranches banned handguns. Rifles and shotguns were "issued" as needed.

*The term "board" has come to mean renting a room, but at the time it meant the room and two meals a day - the "board" was the dining room table. Of course, cowboys and soldiers often didn't really have a "room", being in a barracks or bunkhouse, a tent, or just a bedroll.

Jim

[smle-man]

I wonder when recreational shooting on a regular basis became acheivable for the common man? I dare say that firearms and ammunition are much more affordable for us these days which is why we have multiple quantities of firearms today. In decades past someone would have one, two, or three firearms. Now it is not unusual for even a casual shooter to have half a dozen and a collector approaching 100. At what point does the firearm market become completely saturated?