Help with pulp prices

[DanHoward]

An old Sears mail order catalogue would be perfect for this. Here is one from 1912
https://archive.org/details/catalogno12400sear

[Madnessinabottle]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

An old Sears mail order catalogue would be perfect for this.

I'm British, so there'll be no luck in me finding any of those anywhere. (Unless you edit your post while I'm writing this :P)

I didn't expect such a rapid response, Would any of you know about travel fare at the time? Train between cities or a steamer to asia/europe? or even just the cost of fuel, which I know wasn't always oil based gasoline or Petrol.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Madnessinabottle

I'm British, so there'll be no luck in me finding any of those anywhere. (Unless you edit your post while I'm writing this :P)

Dan Howard posted a link to a scan of a Sears catalogue, which I'm downloading. The best sources I know for British prices are the various editions of the Army & Navy Stores General Price List, which are available as used books - I've taken up collecting them. However, they are not cheap, except for the 1939-40 catalogue which was reprinted a few years ago.

I didn't expect such a rapid response, Would any of you know about travel fare at the time? Train between cities or a steamer to asia/europe? or even just the cost of fuel, which I know wasn't always oil based gasoline or Petrol.

There are some prices for that in GURPS Cliffhangers, and the CoC price lists, I think.

[Madnessinabottle]

All in all, thank you guys, that's set me :)

[jSarek]

I'm not sure what it's source is, but this page has prices for a variety of items, including travel and fuel: http://www.paper-dragon.com/1939/priceguide.html (links at the bottom will take you to other useful info on the era).

As a point of interest, according to Wolfram|Alpha, $1.00 in 1936 was roughly equivalent to $17.36 in 2015.

[Anaraxes]

A factor of about 13.5 between 1925 and 2014, according to the CPI calculator maintained by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

[johndallman]

Measuring Worth explains the various ways of calculating changes in prices, and will do them for you.