It’s 2008, and the voices of handgunners rise throughout the land bemoaning the dramatic price increases in handgun ammunition. We’ve all heard the explanations: military demand with a shooting war on two fronts, precipitously rising costs of brass/copper/lead, and all of that.

Before we complain too much, it’s worth stepping into the time machine of past artifacts to compare today’s prices with yesteryear’s, in comparison with other cost of living increases and the pace of average income during the same period. Let’s go back, oh, half a century.

Rules Of Thumb

As a rule of thumb, many consumer goods cost roughly 10X what they did five decades ago. According to Remember When from Seek Publishing in Millersville, Tennessee, the average 1958 automobile cost $2,155 new. Those were full-size family sedans. Try to buy today’s equivalent, a 2008 Ford Crown Vic, for less than 10X that. The publisher lists $1 as the price of a movie ticket. My last one (tonight) cost me $9.50. Remember When says it cost 4¢ to mail a letter in 1958; it’s 41¢ at this writing.

Let’s look at some timelessly classic handguns. Colt Government .45s cost $78.25 in 1958, and the roughly equivalent baseline Colt 1991A1 starts at $786 today. The same maker’s Single Action Army was $125 new then, and starts at $1,380 from 2008’s Colt Custom Shop. Smith & Wesson’s bread and butter Model 10 .38 Special revolver listed for $62 in 1958, and lists for $632 in 2008. Smith’s all-steel Bodyguard J-frame snub was $66 then, and is $622 now in its stainless Model 649 configuration. The all-steel Ruger Standard Model was still $37.50 in 1958, and its Mark III equivalent begins at $322 today. All things considered, that’s pretty much in the “10X the price of 50 years ago” ballpark.

Of course, that “10X” thing didn’t apply to everything. Gasoline? 24¢ per gallon in 1958. It’s an average of $3 as I write this – a 12-fold increase – and because the prices are as volatile as the product, it may be higher by the time you read it.

A pack of cigarettes in ’58 was maybe two bits, and in Chicago, where I am when I write this, the same brand would go at least 6 bucks in 2008 money, 24 times the cost. In my circle, I could only find one person who could quote a 1958 home price. His parents bought a house for $13,000 in February ’58. He inherited it, and sold it a few years ago, for $300,000, a 23-fold increase.