how much did they really cost?

sooo, if a knife cost 50 cents in 1914, it would cost $181 bucks today. No wonder we complain about the Fit/finish on $30 knives!
 
Dijos said:
sooo, if a knife cost 50 cents in 1914, it would cost $181 bucks today. No wonder we complain about the Fit/finish on $30 knives!
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Now I'm wondering what the average knife cost in 1914. Interesting info. I'm hoping someone out there has some old knive ads/listings with prices from back then to share.
 
Dijos, a friend sent me that page because of the Harness Jacks (he has the whole catalog), and they are wholesale prices. I don't know what % they were marked up, but assuming 50%, those knives would be in the vicinity of $.75 to $1.50 retail.
 
Adjusting for inflation it kind of gives you and idea of the committment a man made to his knife back then and why he carefully chose one and carried it exclusively for as long as it had blades.
 
I agree; knives were more likely to be "used up" back then. It seems I read that Remington's study of how long a pocket knife lasted back then was something like 2-3 years! Does anyone remember reading that?
Anyway, it makes a mint old knife that much more of a treasure! Look at all the knives we own now! I know I could sharpen 2 knives per day for the rest of my life and not even make a dent in wearing out my collection!
 
Dijos said:
sooo, if a knife cost 50 cents in 1914, it would cost $181 bucks today.
Click to expand...
No offense intended, but I believe you miscalculated the inflation increase across that period. Using the inflation calculator (http://inflationdata.com/inflation/Inflation_Rate/InflationCalculator.asp) for the span Jan 1914 to Jan 2006, we see that the inflation rate grew by 1883.00%. Using the formula [current price = x+(x*1883)/100] with x = $0.50, the current equivalent to a 1914 half dollar is $9.92.

A quick check of the above formula shows that if the inflation increase is 100%, then plugging that into the equation [current price = 0.50+(0.50*100)/100] comes up with $1.00, which makes sense.
 
Dijos said:
sooo, if a knife cost 50 cents in 1914, it would cost $181 bucks today. No wonder we complain about the Fit/finish on $30 knives!
Click to expand...

How did you calculate that?

It looks to me like the May, 2006 CPI is 202.5. The May, 1914 CPI is 9.9. That means that you multiply the 1914 price by 202.5/9.9 to get a relevant price today. $.50 x 202.5 / 9.9 = $10.23.


Edit: Ha, 71cuda beat me to the punch.
 
I have a Sears reprint from 1902 and most pocket knives run 75 cents(plain jacks, hawkbills,) to a little under $2.00(English jacks, Stockmen). Flylock switchies were in the $2.50 range.

Straight razors were 75c to $3.00, most in the $1.00-1.50 range.

Colt revolvers were $16-22, depending on options.
 
In 2005, $1.00 from 1911 is worth:
$20.49 using the Consumer Price Index
$15.93 using the GDP deflator
$93.57 using the unskilled wage
$115.02 using the nominal GDP per capita
$363.63 using the relative share of GDP


From http://eh.net/hmit/compare/

From wake forest university. Clearly I did not go there, or I would remember how to calculate CPI from my finance class. :D
 
Now does anyone know what the average knife user of a working type knife would have made back then? What I'm wondering is what kind of purchase a knife represented to a workman, a farmer, or other types of serious end users. If you figure the average per capita at the time that probably wouldn't give a clear picture since there would probably be a wide range of incomes across the whole spectrum of the country. Since money was often scarce to the very folks who would be in positions to use their knives heavily in their day to day living I am curious about how significant an investment they made to come by a solid, every day user (EDU).

While a knife probably wasn't that big a cash bite to the guy who could buy say a Winchester Model 97 or model12 and maybe Winchester Model 94 or 95, I just think a knife was probably a much more significant purchase for a fella to who a break action shotgun was THE gun around the homestead. I could be wrong too. But, I am curious.
 
Amos Iron Wolf said:
Now does anyone know what the average knife user of a working type knife would have made back then? What I'm wondering is what kind of purchase a knife represented to a workman, a farmer, or other types of serious end users. If you figure the average per capita at the time that probably wouldn't give a clear picture since there would probably be a wide range of incomes across the whole spectrum of the country. Since money was often scarce to the very folks who would be in positions to use their knives heavily in their day to day living I am curious about how significant an investment they made to come by a solid, every day user (EDU).
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The other night I watched the movie "Heartland," released in 1979. It was set in Wyoming in ~1914. The woman in the movie who was hired as a cook/housekeeper made $7/week. However, she said that "in the city, she made $1.50/day doing laundry."

Aside, Heartland is a good movie to catch now and then. It's a real honest glimpse into frontier life at the turn of the 20th century.
 
My grandfather worked at a rock quarry in the 1920's, and also for a railroad track repair gang crew. Was paid 25 cents an hour, and the workday was sunup to sundown, no eight hour days back then. :eek:
 
I don't really have anyone left around to ask about what my gret-grandpa Rudd made in the coal mines. He used to work in the mines in eastern KY, back before unions and various improvements, though it is still tough, dangerous work. He was crushed in mining cave in and the doctor told him he would never walk again. He said, "The H*$L I won't!" It took a year or more of the family holding him up while others moved his legs, but eventually he walked, albeit with a bit of a hobble. When he moved the family to southern Ohio he finished out his working life at Hilton-Davis, a chemical plant. I wish he'd been around a bit longer to teach me the old mountain ways.

I guess looking at the info from Cuda and Phil, it is reasonable to figure a decent knife could cost anywhere from 3 or 4 hrs to a full days pay, depending on what you did and where. Depending on the model and the handle material, either yellow handle or Amber Bone, a CV case at the local hardware store will run me anywhere from a half to nearly a full days pay too. Probably a full days net pay for a few of the knives after taxes and adding the sales tax. Pretty similar I suppose. Thank goodness for finding good deals on ebay and friends.

I've heard folks when referring to gun prices then and now say, "Back then you could get a Colt SAA for a $20 gold eagle. You still can." Seems Colt SAAs and $20 Eagles appreciated about the same.
 
Going back a little farther in time, I just pulled out some 1887 mail order ads from Maher & Grosh. Prices include:

3.75" two blade jack, cocobolo $0.50
3.5" three blade whittler, ebony $1.00
4" four blade congress, bone $1.50 ivory $2.00 pearl $2.50
4.25" two blade cigar jack, ebony $1.00
5.37" two blade cokebottle, cocobolo $1.50

Most records that I have seen from that time show a typical days wages for a laboror (ranching, mining, etc) at about $1/day. So figure what you make in a day, (pre-tax, including benefits) and you have a rough idea what it would cost you today. If a construction worker makes $10/hour (and that is pretty low for around here) then that 1887 $1 knife would be about $100 or more today. So those $40-50 Case or Queen slipjoints look like a real bargain.

That being said, many of the near mint examples of slipjoints that I have seen from 100 years ago are generally better made than what we have today. Most had very good grinds, great fit and finish. Heat treating may have been a little more inconsistent, probably due to technology limitations, but the general construction seen on knives from the better manufacturers of the day was very good.
 
In 1914, Henry Ford raised the wages in his assembly plant to $5.00 a day. This caused an uproar in the business community as the normal wage was about $2.00 a day. This was for factory work in Detroit, in other parts of the country and for other work it may have been less. But I think for 1914, around $1.50---$2.00 a day would be a pretty good basis to compare it with the price of a knife.

But also remember that what you earned back then was pretty much what you took home--very few deductions from your paycheck in those days. That would help them back then to afford a knife.

All in all we are probably better off today in terms of buying a knife. It may not be as high a quality, but certainly a slip joint from Case, Camillus, Buck, Mooremaker, etc. isn't bad, and not a huge dent in the budget.

Also, back then there were not a lot of choices in the retail market to compare prices--you had your local retailer and the mail order catalogs like Sears. Look at the array of retailers-- including e-bay-- we have today to choose from and compare prices.
 
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