@KA9FFJ At the foot of the page it says Sears, Roebuck and Co. I’d say just place a catalog order😬, but sadly the same/similar thing that made a Sears famous (mail order), has since killed it off (online order)🙁.
@motie2 Thanks for posting the old Sears catalog page, amazing how the worth of US currency has fallen over the years.
Did a bit of investigation to try and place the year of the page based on the postal rate at the bottom of the page and Sears history.
Apparently Sears discounted the shipping cost as the cheapest shipping rate from USPS I found during their catalog operation was .02 cents an ounce until 1928. Not much help
Looking at Sear's history, I can only guess that that page is roughly from between 1905and 1925.
@mapletop It's called inflation. People who complain about how much things cost these days forget that the wages and salaries were a lot lower back in those days also. The value of a dollar was less back in 1950 than it is today.
I'm not a mathematician, so I can't do it. But, I would love to see someone figure out what the cost to wage percentage of a tin of tobacco was to a minimum wage worker in 1970 compared to the cost to wage percentage of a tin of tobacco in 2020.
I looked up the federal minimum wage for 1971. It was $1.60 per hour. In 2020, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. The cost of a loaf of bread in 1971 was 25 cents per loaf (it didn't specify brand, just the average cost.) The AVERAGE cost today is $2.54 per loaf (I know, store brands sell for around $1.00 per loaf but this is the average cost.)
So, by my calculation - which could be wrong - you would spend approximately 15% of the minimum wage in 1971 to buy a loaf of bread. In today's numbers, 15 percent of the minimum wage is $1.08, so you would spend about the same percentage on a loaf of cheap store brand bread. The cost of the average loaf of bread ($2.54) is actually 35 percent of the minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.
Now, I just need to find out what the average cost of a pouch of Prince Albert was back in 1971 and compare it to the cost today.
I remember reading once (think maybe mid-1970s) that at the beginning of the 20th century, a $20 gold coin could buy you a top-line Colt's revolver, or a finest off-the-rack type man's suit, and the article claimed that at it's time of publication, that $20 gold piece still could. But of course, that's not printed fiat money, it's inflated price of gold between those two dates.
@KA9FFJ I’m thinking that there use to be lights in each hole, it would look like the smoke from the pipe. The guy at the top kinda looks like Cagney....so maybe it was riddled with a “Chicago Typewriter”😳. The sign has seen better days, just like our hobby. It would be nice to see both of them restored to their former glory.
I have a Linkman Hollycourt Special that was made in the late 1930s/early 1940s before the name was changed from Linkman to Dr. Grabow. That's the third oldest pipe that I own. The oldest is a Salmon & Gluckstein with a silver band stamp that was used before 1915.
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I pondered the exact same thing when I saw it 🙂
At the foot of the page it says Sears, Roebuck and Co.
I’d say just place a catalog order😬, but sadly the same/similar thing that made a Sears famous (mail order), has since killed it off (online order)🙁.
What ever happened to Roebuck? Did they ever find his body?
😳
It's called inflation.
People who complain about how much things cost these days forget that the wages and salaries were a lot lower back in those days also. The value of a dollar was less back in 1950 than it is today.
I'm not a mathematician, so I can't do it. But, I would love to see someone figure out what the cost to wage percentage of a tin of tobacco was to a minimum wage worker in 1970 compared to the cost to wage percentage of a tin of tobacco in 2020.
I looked up the federal minimum wage for 1971. It was $1.60 per hour. In 2020, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour.
The cost of a loaf of bread in 1971 was 25 cents per loaf (it didn't specify brand, just the average cost.) The AVERAGE cost today is $2.54 per loaf (I know, store brands sell for around $1.00 per loaf but this is the average cost.)
So, by my calculation - which could be wrong - you would spend approximately 15% of the minimum wage in 1971 to buy a loaf of bread. In today's numbers, 15 percent of the minimum wage is $1.08, so you would spend about the same percentage on a loaf of cheap store brand bread. The cost of the average loaf of bread ($2.54) is actually 35 percent of the minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.
Now, I just need to find out what the average cost of a pouch of Prince Albert was back in 1971 and compare it to the cost today.
I’m thinking that there use to be lights in each hole, it would look like the smoke from the pipe. The guy at the top kinda looks like Cagney....so maybe it was riddled with a “Chicago Typewriter”😳. The sign has seen better days, just like our hobby. It would be nice to see both of them restored to their former glory.
That's the third oldest pipe that I own. The oldest is a Salmon & Gluckstein with a silver band stamp that was used before 1915.
Not to mention the apple wood - 1st column, 1st pipe...