1975 Dollars (was RE: State of the Hobby)

From: Kai Kaltenbach <kaikal_at_MICROSOFT.com>
Date: Thu Jul 1 13:10:55 1999

I grabbed the Consumer Price Index history off the web, pasted into Excel,
and applied the percentage changes cumulative from 1975.

One 1998 dollar = $2.95 in 1975 dollars (ouch, those Carter administration
years! Thank goodness for Greenspan)

Therefore, an assembled Altair 8800 with 4x2K static RAM, serial, parallel,
cassette, and bus expansion, $1880 in 1975 dollars, would be the equivalent
of $5546 today.

An Apple Lisa base configuration ($9995 in 1983 dollars) would be $16,169
today.

Kai

 -----Original Message-----
From: John Foust [mailto:jfoust_at_threedee.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 01, 1999 10:45 AM
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
Subject: Re: State of the Hobby

At 11:02 AM 7/1/99 -0600, you wrote:
>
>In a recent auction on eBay, a MITS Floppy Disk Drive was auctioned off at
>$565. "WOW!" you may say, but that unit cost $1300 when new, and that was
>in dollars that were a DOLLAR, and not just the price of a candy bar.

I suppose there must be a web site, somewhere, that would let you enter
a date and a US dollar amount, and would show you the equivalent value
in today's dollars, accounting for actual inflation, etc. in the
intervening years.

Which reminds me, when I was in high school, we sold candy bars to
fund the purchase of a few K of RAM for the IMSAI as well as a floppy drive.

>I'm presently in the process of selling off excess 8" floppy drives for $5
each,

Similarly, you'd think there would be a web site somewhere to
remind people of the rapid devaluation of the value of computer
equipment - say, perhaps the flip side of Moore's Law, that shows
how simply purchasing and opening the box of a new computer causes
a significant drop in value, followed by subsequent halvings of
resale value every six months, until it quickly reaches the
"nuisance fee" level mentioned above, where the cost of shipping
and packing seems to exceed the street price.

- John
Received on Thu Jul 01 1999 - 13:10:55 BST