I made a small cash deposit at my local bank lasts week. If you have ever deposited hundred-dollar bills, or others, in a bank, you know they all have a machine which counts and digests them very quickly. It would be pretty difficult to rob a bank today, as all the bills are in that machine. At any rate, the machine coughed up a single hundred-dollar bill, and it would not take it when the teller tried to re-deposit it in the machine. Why? Because it is a 1950 class C, hundred-dollar bill, and it doesn’t have the stuff newer bills have, which machines require to accept. It is in pretty good shape, and I wondered how much a 73 year-old hundred-dollar bill is worth today. It is worth $105. Shucks, I thought it would be worth a lot more.
I then went to the internet, to see what a hundred dollars would have bought In 1950, when that bill was made. A hundred dollars, in 1950, today, would require $12.68 to buy the same things! Here’s some prices in 1950.
New home – $7150
Average income per year – $3216
New Ford – $1339-$2262 (for a deluxe one, I guess, as my Dad bought a deluxe 1949 Ford for $1995)
Milk – 82 cents a gallon.
Gasoline – 20 cents a gallon.
Stamps. – 3 cents.
Quart of Kraft’s mayonnaise – 62 cents.
Tee shirts – Two for 59 cents.
Dozen eggs – 60 cents.
Why do I mention these prices? Because, if you had buried your dollars in the ground, for the benefit of your kids’ college, or anything else, They would buy less than a twelfth of what they would have bought when you buried them.
I forgot! Sorry! In 1950, gold was $35 and ounce, and silver was 73 cents an ounce. DO NOT SAVE IN DOLLARS. SAVE IN SILVER AND GOLD!
Don Stott – don@coloradogold.com