Found out today that a regular 6 inch chimney brush from the 1800s cost more than my first car

I was looking through an old trade journal from 1887 that a customer handed me, and it said a standard brush and rod set back then ran about $12. Adjusted for inflation that is over $400 today, which is wild. I paid $350 for my first beater truck when I was 16. Makes you appreciate how cheap our tools have gotten, even if the materials are different. Has anyone else run across old price lists that made you do a double take?

3 comments

3 Comments

dixon.james1mo ago

Shows how much tech has made everything dirt cheap compared to back then.

shane_park921mo ago

Flagship phones and bread have gone up, sure, but look at what a basic laptop or TV costs now compared to the 90s. A 50 inch 4K TV was a pipe dream then, now you can grab one for a few hundred bucks. Tech made the stuff we don't think twice about almost free, but it didn't touch the essentials.

the_hayden1mo ago

Tech has made some things cheaper, sure, but not everything. A flagship phone costs over a grand now, a loaf of bread is like 4 bucks, and good luck finding a used car that doesn't cost what a new one did ten years ago. Maybe the cheap stuff got cheaper, but the stuff you actually need got way more expensive.