01-25-2015, 08:12 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Sep 2014
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Help with pulp prices
I have a pulp adventure in the works but I'm really struggling to find a good source for 1920-30's prices.
I'm speaking as broadly as possible, from Rent to food to the cost of a gun. I like to give my Players free reign to do as they please and then drop a steaming pile of plot on their living room floor, then watch them cry as they try to get the stains out. And please can we hold back on the sarcasm, I know how to google, I have searched for info in old threads. I'm really just hoping you guys have ran similar games and have a few links bookmarked. It's a world adventure kill the mummy, foil the cults affair, if that's helpful. |
01-25-2015, 08:18 PM | #2 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Austin, TX
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Re: Help with pulp prices
GURPS Classic: Cliffhangers has 4-5 pages of generic prices for the 1920s and 1930s, but to a first approximation you can just divide modern day prices by 10 or so.
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01-25-2015, 08:23 PM | #3 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Help with pulp prices
For generic prices, take a look at http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1930s.html . For example, in 1939 the average yearly income was about $1700, a car cost about $700, and a house cost about $3800. They suggest dividing current prices for consumer goods by 12, but that's obviously not right for any of those three things!
I believe that most editions of Call of Cthulhu have tables of prices for the era between the World Wars, which will cover a lot of what you're looking for.
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
01-25-2015, 08:25 PM | #4 |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Maitland, NSW, Australia
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Re: Help with pulp prices
An old Sears mail order catalogue would be perfect for this. Here is one from 1912
https://archive.org/details/catalogno12400sear
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01-25-2015, 08:30 PM | #5 |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: Help with pulp prices
Pulp Guns 1 has slightly more detail on price conversions from historical US$ to GURPS$. If you run into historical prices in British £, the exchange rate during the period was pegged at US$4.85 to £1.
If you want lots of prices for the period, a department store catalog is really useful. You can sometimes get them as PDFs on eBay, or as used books via the http://used.addall.com/ search engine. |
01-25-2015, 08:32 PM | #6 |
Join Date: Sep 2014
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Re: Help with pulp prices
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. |
01-25-2015, 08:44 PM | #7 | ||
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: Help with pulp prices
Quote:
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01-25-2015, 08:55 PM | #8 |
Join Date: Sep 2014
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Re: Help with pulp prices
All in all, thank you guys, that's set me :)
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01-27-2015, 12:10 PM | #9 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Bakersfield, CA
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Re: Help with pulp prices
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. |
01-27-2015, 01:22 PM | #10 |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: Help with pulp prices
A factor of about 13.5 between 1925 and 2014, according to the CPI calculator maintained by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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Tags |
cthulhu, pulp campaign |
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