Category Archives: Historical Prices

1950 Grocery Prices

1950Nov20PghPressHere’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.



1940 Grocery Prices

1940Nov14PittsburghPressHere’s a snapshot of what grocery prices looked like 80 years ago, from the November 14, 1940, issue of the Pittsburgh Press.

When you look at these old prices, one way to translate them to modern prices is by remembering that each dollar was made up of ten silver dimes or four silver quarters. Either way, it was one ounce of silver. Today, the price of silver is about $24 per ounce, so if you multiply these prices by 24, you’ll get the rough modern equivalent.

Chicken would set you back 29 cents a pound, which would be about $7 a pound in today’s money. Ham was 19 cents a pound, or the equivalent of about $4.50 today.

Fish from Lake Erie was 25 cents a pound. You could buy it fresh, or for the same price, you could buy it cooked, and warm it up at  home. At the lunch counter, a meal of either halibut or ham would set you back 56 cents for two people.



1945 Grocery Prices

1945Feb9PittsburghPostGazFor the American housewife fighting on the Home Front in 1945, here was the battle plan, as published 75 years ago today in the February 9, 1945, issue of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

One way to compare the spending power in pre-1964 dollars is to remember that one dollar was one silver dollar, which is worth about $18 dollars today. So 25 pounds of flour was 98 cents, which works out to about 70 cents per pound in today’s money. That seems pretty reasonable, but eggs work out to about $10 per dozen, and pork sausage to over $6 per pound, meaning that the housewife had to be creative when it came to getting protein into her family’s diet.

Some items, such as beef, sugar, and butter, were rationed. But all of the items in this ad were freely available.



1944 Grocery Prices

1944Nov9MilJourHere’s another snapshot of wartime grocery prices from 1944, from the November 9, 1944, issue of the Milwaukee Journal. None, or very few, of the items shown here required ration coupons, as would be the case for sugar, meat, and some other items.

As with pre-1964 prices, one way to convert to today’s money is to remember that one dollar meant one silver dollar, four silver quarter, or ten silver dimes, or about an ounce of silver, which would be worth about $18.

Flour was $1.17 for a 25 pound bag. A pound of coffee would set you back 21 cents, and a 12 ounce box of Grapenuts was 13 cents. And a package of “Kool-Aid Ice Cream Mix” was only a nickel.



Canned Bacon: 1919 and 2019

1919Sept25MilJourFullAd1919Sept25MilJourWith World War 1 soldiers on their way home or already there, the U.S. Army had some surplus commodities to get rid of a hundred years ago, and that included bacon. This ad appeared in the Milwaukee Journal a hundred years ago today, September 25, 1919, for the Boston Store in Milwaukee.

The store offered mostly dry goods, ranging from from toilet paper (6 rolls for 19 cents) up to a player piano ($395).  They also had a limited selection of food items, apparent “loss leaders” to get traffic into the store, shown at left.  And, of course, what stands out is the twelve pound can of army bacon for $3.66.  That, of course, is before a century of inflation, but a good way to put old prices in context is to remember that the money was made out of silver, so that the $3.66 really meant about 3.66 ounces of silver.  Today, that would be about $60.

That’s still a reasonable price, however.  The current WalMart price for 12 pounds of bacon is about $53.  That bacon, of course, isn’t really suitable for long-term storage, whereas the 1919 product was canned.  Interestingly enough, though, canned bacon is still readily available, and can be purchased at Amazon.  As you can see below, it’s rather expensive, especially considering that this price is for a nine ounce can:

On the other hand, for your emergency food storage needs, it might fill a niche.  According to the reviews, the product is excellent, and the 9 ounce can contains about 50 slices of bacon.  So having a can or two in the pantry might not be out of the question.

Since the modern product has 50 slices in the 9 ounce can, this means that the 12 pound can from 1919 contained several hundred slices.  So it probably was worth racing down to the store to get a couple cans.

If you’re looking for more ideas for protein for your home food storage, the most economical is probably dry beans or perhaps peanut butter.  If you crave real meat, one of the cheapest is probably tuna.  Other good options are potted meat, canned chicken, or, of course, the venerable Spam.  But if you want to get a can or two of canned bacon, I can’t blame you.

For more information about emergency food storage, see my food storage page.



1944 Grocery Prices

1944Jun29MilJourHere’s another snapshot of wartime grocery prices 75 years ago today, June 29, 1944, as shown in this IGA ad in the Milwaukee Journal. In most browsers, you can click on the image, and then click again to enlarge.

If you’re a comparison shopping time traveler, you might be interested in the following links:



1944 Grocery Prices

1944April27MilJourHere’s a snapshot of grocery prices during World War II. This ad for National Tea Food Stores  appeared in the Milwaukee Journal 75 years ago today, April 27, 1944.

Many items were rationed.  For example, the beef and pork indicate how many points were needed, meaning that the shopper would need to redeem a ration coupon.  Other items, such as chicken and fish, are advertised as “no points,” meaning that they were not rationed.



1958 Grocery Prices

1958Aug21MilJournalHere’s a snapshot of grocery prices 60 years ago today, as shown in this ad from the August 21, 1958, issue of the Milwaukee Journal.  You can click on the image above for a full-size image.

The prices look cheap, but keep in mind that there’s been a lot of inflation in the last sixty years, and the money is no longer backed by silver.  One way to compare pre-1964 prices is to remember that one dollar could be in the form of one silver dollar, four silver quarter, or ten silver dimes, all of which equaled approximately one ounce of silver.  The price of silver today is approximately $15 per ounce, meaning that to compare, you should multiply the prices by 15 to get the approximate price in today’s money.

Another way to compare prices is to look at the minimum wage. In 1958, the federal minimum wage was $1 per hour, but now it is $7.25 per hour. To use this metric to compare prices, you would multiply the prices shown here by $7.25.

The following chart shows the 1958 prices of various items, and the adjusted prices using each metric. Finally, it shows the price of a comparable product at Walmart.

Product

1958 Price

Adusted for Silver Value

Adjusted For Minimum Wage

2018 Walmart Price

T-Bone Steak, per pound

$0.99

14.85

7.18

  9.48

Rump Roast, per pound

$0.89

13.35

6.45

  4.97

Corned Beef, 12 oz. can

$0.41

6.15

2.97

  3.12

Spam, 12 oz. can 0

$0.47

7.05

3.41

  2.64

Beef stew, 24 oz. can 

$0.45

6.75

3.26

  2.18

Butter, 1 lb.

$0.79

11.85

5.73

  3.24

Ice cream, 1/2 gal. 

$0.89

13.35

6.45

  2.97

Coffee, 1 lb.

$0.69

10.35

5.00

  3.65

Chicken noodle soup

2/$0.25

1.88

1.08

  1,48

Pork & Beans, 16 oz.

2/$0.25

1.88

1.08

  1.48

Tomato soup

$0.11

1.65

0.91

  1.58

Crackers, 1 lb.

$0.33

4.96

2.39

  1.78

By clicking the Walmart prices above, you can view the product and its current price, which might have changed from the price shown.  Links on this page are affiliate links, meaning that if you make a purchase after clicking the link, this website receives a small commission.

For a look at other prices through history:  1939 prices, 1956 prices.



1956 Prices

1956 grocery prices.

Here’s a snapshot of consumer grocery prices sixty years ago. This ad for Kroger’s appeared in the Pittsburgh Press, August 23, 1956.

It’s not a perfect method of comparing prices (because silver is also a commodity whose price varies), but the easiest way to compare pre-1964 prices is to remember that a dollar equaled one silver dollar, four silver quarters, or ten silver dimes, each of which weighed one ounce.  So if you think of the prices in terms of ounces of silver, you’ll get an idea of what prices were really like then.  The price of silver today is about $18, so by multiplying these prices by 18, you’ll get an idea of what items cost then.

A pound of ground beef cost 39 cents, but by this comparison, that would equal about $7 a pound.  A pint of mayonnaise was 47 cents, the equivalent of $8.46 in today’s money.  Tuna was two cans for 63 cents, which works out to $5.67 per can in today’s money.

 

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