Here’s a snapshot of grocery prices 70 years ago today, from the November 20, 1950, edition of the Pittsburgh Press.
With Thanksgiving just around the corner, it was only natural that turkeys featured prominently, at 69 cents a pound (or 59 cents a pound for those 16 pounds and up). For 29 cents, you could get two pounds of cranberries, two pounds of apples, or three pounds of sweet potatoes. If you preferred your cranberries out of a can, the canned cranberry sauce was 7 cans for a dollar.
If you were stocking up on other meat, pork roasts were 33 cents a pound, and beef roasts were 59 cents a pound.
For the pantry, you could get ten cans of Campbell’s Tomato Soup for a dollar, a two pound jar of grape jelly for 43 cents, olives for 43 cents, and asparagus five cans for a dollar. Two loaves of bread were 27 cents.
You could wash it all down with a carton of cigarettes for only $2, and for the bathroom, four bars of soap would set you back 36 cents.