Things that were more expensive “in the old days” (80's, state)

[Mouldy Old Schmo]

But some people say they are willing to pay more for products made in the USA by union workers.

[Eumaois]

Originally Posted by Nearwest

I can recall 2 items purchased by friends which were considered very expensive at the time.


1) In 1979, a friend bought a VCR for the sale price of $1500. It was huge, similar in size to a tape recorder. There was a pop-up top in which the tape was inserted and the mouse was connected to the VCR by a wire.


2) Another friend bought a complete desk top computer in 1998. The sale price was $3000. It included a keyboard, monitor which was as deep as a TV set, tower, and a wired mouse. He added 2 speakers which had to connected to either side of the monitor.

$1500 for a VCR in 1979 money? Sheesh, it's a good thing the VCR became more of a mainstream item and prices went down!

[VTsnowbird]

My first printer was secondhand from my brother-in-law. I looked it up online and it had sold originally for about $800 in 1992. It was so old, it had different cartridges for different fonts. Amazingly, when I wanted to get rid of it and listed it for free on CL, someone 1000 miles away wanted it for some weird reason and paid me to ship it to them. And no, it wasn't a scam!!


Last time I bought a new portable TV, cheapest one was about $150 (pre-flatscreen). Now you can get them for less than $100.

[MinivanDriver]

Originally Posted by Eumaois

$1500 for a VCR in 1979 money? Sheesh, it's a good thing the VCR became more of a mainstream item and prices went down!

My brother paid $1800 for a new DVD player when they came out. About eight-nine years later, I paid $28 for one.

[ddm2k]

I'm a telephone guy. Here's what I've noticed:

- Residential landlines being required to maintain separate long distance carriers. I remember we had Alltel local and AT&T long distance service. As far back as I remember, it was $40/mo for local and $30/mo for unlimited LD in the 1990s. Businesses on old school voice T1's still have to pay per min for LD. On VoIP you do not.

- Cell phones charging for LD and roaming. Not to mention LD while roaming! 300 minutes a month for $39.99, $0.25/text. Nights and weekends! Mobile to mobile!

- We had a small local dial-up ISP. $24.99/mo. A 56k connection cost more. Roadrunner was $59.99/mo for 1.5 Mbps. Then 15 Mbps. Now 200 Mbps. Same price for the internet portion.

- 36" Sony Wega Trinitron TV, $1599 in 1999. 238 lbs. Now you can't give it away.

[VTsnowbird]

I also remember when the first quartz watches came out (1975 or so?) they were about $250. Now you can buy one at the dollar store.

[mofford]

Aluminum, it was more expensive than gold until 1886, when they learned how to make it from bauxite using the Bayer/Hall-Heroult process.

Linoleum, in the late 1800's it was new and very expensive, the upper classes removed their outdated Persian rugs and wanted some fancy linoleum on the floor.

Pornography, porn was much more expensive in the old days before VHS, being considered an illegal activity, finding subjects and people willing to produce it would have cost a premium.

Heroin, so cheap today, any kid can buy some, probably cheaper now than back the 1800's when it was invented, it's price peaked in the 1970's and 1980's when maximum effort was being used reduce supply, with stiff prison time for possession of even a small amount, pretty much the same thing for meth, cocaine, and marijuana. Booze was never more expensive than in the 1920's because of prohibition.

Pet Rocks, introduced in 1975, the pet rock sold for 4 dollars each, you can get one much cheaper today if you know where to look. Gary Dahl invented the pet rock and became a millionaire by 1976.

[cebuan]

In the 50s, phonograph record cost 98c, and they were very fragile shellac discs that broke easily. That was an hour's pay for a man supporting a family, and everybody owned a phonograph and a stack of records. I don't think the price of a single play record ever went much above or below a dollar.


When unbreakable plastic LPs came out, they were about five bucks, for maybe ten songs.. About the same price as a CD 50 years later. The artist's royalty on that is a few cents, too small to be relevant to the conversation..

[Jill_Schramm]

Before globalization (recently) and before industrialization and mass production (in the nineteenth century), many common items were much more expensive than they are today. Take clothing, for example. I know that when my mother was a child, it was much less expensive to make your own clothes, than it was to buy them. Earlier, before industrialization, I imagine the difference was even more stark. You either made your own clothes or had someone make them for you ... and you certainly didn’t have an entire closet full of outfits, unless you were a very unusual person.

[jtab4994]

Originally Posted by Mouldy Old Schmo

What else was more expensive than it is now?

Long distance phone calls. People used to wait until 8:00 at night, or 11:00PM for the best rate, to call long distance. Now calls are free* if you have an average cell phone plan.


Cell phone service used to have roaming charges, and fees would kick in after you used a certain number of minutes. Now pretty much everything except burner phones is free with a monthly plan.


Heck, even international calls can be free* if you use Facetime or Skype.


*Free = no charge per call. You pay a flat rate for cell phone or internet service.