In 1974 it cost $16.95...

For those who are content to get the same thrill (without the extra cost) of the High Power Peple
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#1 In 1974 it cost $16.95...

Post by bernomatic »

and that was a lot of money in those days. Of course for a lad who's income was limited to five cents for every (full) garbage can he emptied in a week, 339 trips to the dust bins was unimaginable. Yes the mighty Saturn V would be a dream to own for a long time.

But now, one sits in my bedroom where I can gaze upon it when wakening and read through the directions a couple of times (even for a skill level 4, this ain't no mosquito or WAC Corporal), the mighty Saturn V kit sits awaiting its turn in the build queue.
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#2 Re: In 1974 it cost $16.95...

Post by luke strawwalker »

Hmmm... what is that inflation adjusted??

I thought the $100 price tag on the (fairly) recent Saturn V releases was pretty steep, but actually compared to the price of the original, it's probably really not.

I use this example frequently when discussing farming....

When I was a little kid (still little enough to ride in Dad's 72 Chevy pickup STANDING UP ON THE SEAT between him and mom-- try that today and you'll be in jail and your kid will be in CPS!) we made 60-70 cents a pound on cotton... Of course fertilizer was $60 a ton, seed was $8-10 per 50 lb bag (plants 3.5 acres usually) and farm diesel (without road tax) was around 20-30 cents a gallon (IIRC). Dad would take us out to eat a couple times a week-- a 2 piece chicken dinner with 2 sides and a roll at Ron's Chicken was $0.35 cents, so all three of us could eat, with cokes or teas, for about $1. Dad bought his 72 Chevy half ton pickup for about $1,600 brand spanking new...

Fast forward to the late 80's-early 90's when I had just graduated and was farming-- fertilizer was $160 a ton, seed was about $50 per 50 pound bag (still planting about 3.5 acres) and farm diesel (no road tax) was around $1 a gallon. About the cheapest food you could get was a McDonald's cheeseburger for $0.79 cents... that chicken dinner was about $3.50 or so... But we STILL sold cotton for 60-70 cents a pound! Oh, and sometime in the mid-80's we went from getting a seed check for cottonseed ginned out of the cotton lint, which paid for the ginning and sold for a surplus, so we got a little check for cottonseed, to where we OWED money to the gin for the ginning bill at the end of the year; the cottonseed didn't cover the cost of ginning anymore, so we owed THEM money instead of the other way around... Grandma had traded off Grandpa's 77 Ford pickup he'd given about $1,800 or so for brand new for a new 85 Ford F-150, a strip down with a 300 inline 6 engine and a 3-on-the-tree manual transmission, much like the 77... only now it cost close to $10,000 bucks... It was finally traded off on a 92 Ford F-150 with the same 300 six engine and five speed overdrive floor shift, only this time with air conditioning, for about $16,000.

Fast forward to the early 2000's when we quit row cropping. Fertilizer prices had spiked in the mid-90's due to "natural gas shortages" and other schemes (engineered shortages are a well known price manipulating tool) and had skyrocketed to about $800 a ton at one point, but had settled back to about $400 a ton. Seed had come a long way, what with improved fungicide treatments applied to it and of course the (new then) GMO traits that had taken over the market (coincidentally after the genetic engineering companies had bought up all the seed companies after over a half-decade of "merger mania") and seed prices skyrocketed as well, to around $300 per 50 pound bag, depending on traits... prices between $250-350 a bag were common. Due to this enormous price increase, farmers cut planting rates to the absolute minimum to still produce a good crop, so now a bag covers a whopping 4 acres instead of 3.5. Farm diesel without road tax fluctuated wildly between about $2 a gallon on the low end to nearly $4 a gallon during times of "shortages" and market spikes. Ginning costs could account for another $5-10 per bale by the end of the season. That chicken dinner would cost you upwards of $5.50 or so, but cotton was STILL 60-70 cents a pound! Betty and I were expecting Keira, and traded off the 92 F-150 (that I had bought from Grandma as she'd bought a 77 Chevy Suburban with a 454 automatic for farm pulling) on an 02 F-150 Supercrew 4 door pickup that was 2 years old with 29,000 miles, that cost us $18,000.

Now today yall know what stuff costs-- a new diesel farm truck is $70,000 dollars, even a stripdown half-ton gasser pickup will set you back $36,000 new. Diesel is about $2.10 a gallon without road tax, depending on the "market conditions". Seed is pushing $400 a bag, fertilizer is routinely $600 a ton, ginning costs have gone up as they also including trucking modules long distances to the much fewer remaining cotton gins, and higher electricity prices to operate the gin, etc. That chicken dinner will set you back about $8-9 dollars now... and cotton is STILL 60-70 cents a pound!

Didn't take a math PhD to figure out that was a losing proposition. When I was a kid, anything over a half-bale per acre was considered a pretty good crop. When I was in high school, we considered 3/4 of a bale per acre to bale per acre cotton to be a good crop. Now the extension service gurus calculate the breakeven cost of producing cotton at 2.5 bales per acre-- IOW, if you don't make AT LEAST 2-2.5 bales per acre, you're not making ANYTHING. Now, some years back then we'd make 2.5, even 3 bale per acre cotton, IF everything was 'just perfect' and all the stars aligned to make a good crop. But, it was rare; usually our yields averaged about half bale to bale per acre cotton. Even with improvements to genetics and GMO traits, yields didn't rise as fast as costs, and making 2 bale per acre cotton is still about the 'average' yield; making 2.5-3 bale per acre cotton in our area requires everything be "just perfect" and is the exception than the rule.

Grandpa used to make 0.5-1.5 bale per acre cotton back in the 50's and 60's, when he farmed with 2 row equipment and hired hand choppers and pickers to chop out weeds and pick the crop by hand. Back then he repowered his Ford 8N Golden Jubilee and NAA tractors with propane, because farm gasoline was 6 cents a gallon and butane was 3 cents a gallon. He sold cotton for, you guessed it... 60-70 cents a pound...

SO, when you choke on the bill after eating out, or shake your head at the dizzying total of your basket of groceries, don't get mad at the farmer... we're making the same amount of money per pound as we did in the 50's, but we pay 2000-teen prices for everything we have to buy, just like everybody else. Milk farmers are going broke hand over fist, even with milk pushing $6 a gallon in a lot of places. Whole milk prices paid to farmers are at historic lows. It's the same story with ALL the crops... wheat is practically worthless (DIRT cheap, and basically nobody who has a choice even grows it anymore (certain areas will only grow wheat, not corn or soybeans with any reliability due to lack of water), as one friend of ours put it, "I'm convinced you could throw GOLD NUGGETS into a load of wheat and they'd DOCK THE PRICE FOR 'foreign matter'"... ABSOLUTELY true! Corn prices are hovering at the $3.50 a bushel range-- same price it was in the late 70's and soybeans and sorghum and other crops are similarly priced-- meanwhile inputs and machinery are higher than ever.

In 74 or 75 Dad and Grandpa bought a new Ford combine, built by Claas in Germany but powered with a Ford 300 cubic inch six cylinder inline engine; they paid $12,000 for it because it had been on the dealer lot for a year or two-- nobody was buying much. At the time it was one of the biggest combines sold in North America (basically in the world). Now you can't even buy a combine that small... and the new ones START at about $500,000 for a new combine...

I chalk MOST of it up to Nixon giving in to the banksters of his day and taking the US off the gold standard-- our money has been in a constant slide into worthlessness ever since. SOMEONE is making money off that, but it's not the producers or the workers...

Later! OL J R :)
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#3 Re: In 1974 it cost $16.95...

Post by luke strawwalker »

Well, I was curious enough to answer my own question...according to a website I googled, that $16.95 1974 Saturn V would cost you $88.58 in today's dollars... so the $100 Saturn V is something of a ripoff...

Figures...

Later! OL J R :)
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#4 Re: In 1974 it cost $16.95...

Post by Rocket Babe »

Someone say Saturn V? :lol:

Today's cost is probably pretty close in 2017 dollars. I thought $99 at a local hobby shop was ridiculous way back in 1999. The guy said he'd had the pair 3 years at that price so I said I'd give him $80 for both including tax. He thought a moment then agreed. Over the years I've purchased 15 of the various Estes versions and given a few away as gifts.

Of the 9 you see attached, built or mint in the box, I've never paid more than $40 for 1 and my best score was 3 for $60. Cheapest was swapping an autographed photo of Rocket Babe for a mint 2001 kit. Just keep your eyes open and you'll stumble across them for a good price at some point.

We currently have 8 stock piled waiting for grand kids to get a little older.
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#5 Re: In 1974 it cost $16.95...

Post by bernomatic »

luke strawwalker wrote:Well, I was curious enough to answer my own question...according to a website I googled, that $16.95 1974 Saturn V would cost you $88.58 in today's dollars... so the $100 Saturn V is something of a ripoff...

Figures...

Later! OL J R :)
Then I'm glad I got it for less through Amazon. But then you were dealing with MSRP.
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#6 Re: In 1974 it cost $16.95...

Post by bernomatic »

Rocket Babe wrote:Someone say Saturn V? :lol:

Today's cost is probably pretty close in 2017 dollars. I thought $99 at a local hobby shop was ridiculous way back in 1999. The guy said he'd had the pair 3 years at that price so I said I'd give him $80 for both including tax. He thought a moment then agreed. Over the years I've purchased 15 of the various Estes versions and given a few away as gifts.

Of the 9 you see attached, built or mint in the box, I've never paid more than $40 for 1 and my best score was 3 for $60. Cheapest was swapping an autographed photo of Rocket Babe for a mint 2001 kit. Just keep your eyes open and you'll stumble across them for a good price at some point.

We currently have 8 stock piled waiting for grand kids to get a little older.
Now here's a silly question Babe, build it straight single engine? or adapt to a cluster?

Of course there's always that staging thing. :D ;)
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#7 Re: In 1974 it cost $16.95...

Post by Rocket Babe »

ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, CLUSTER! :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :D

Cluster staging is good too! 8-)
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#8 Re: In 1974 it cost $16.95...

Post by Commander »

Rocket Babe wrote:ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, CLUSTER! :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :D

Cluster staging is good too! 8-)
You are dangerous... in more ways than one. :o

(I was thinking to a person's wallet :roll: )
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#9 Re: In 1974 it cost $16.95...

Post by luke strawwalker »

Rocket Babe wrote:ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, CLUSTER! :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :D

Cluster staging is good too! 8-)
Yep, I've seen your and Randy's clustered/staged Saturn V's... As Darth Vader said, "IMPRESSIVE! *MOST* IMPRESSIVE!"

The Force is strong with that one! :lol:

Later! OL J R :)
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#10 Re: In 1974 it cost $16.95...

Post by Rocket Babe »

I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way... ;) :lol:
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