[Hallicrafters] inflation

Fri May 30 00:37:33 EDT 2008

Peter,

Remember the United States went off the gold standard about 1974! Prior to 
that, the treasury had to have an equal amount of Silver in reserve to mint 
dimes, quarters and half dollars, as well as paper Silver Certificates. The 
treasury also had to have an equal amount of gold in reserve to back all the 
paper money printed. Since the United States had a fixed per Troy ounce 
price of gold, and the rest of the world had dropped their fixed price, the 
USA had to drop the fixed price of gold, and drop the gold and silver 
standard system altogether, so the value of our gold was the same as it was 
in other countries.

I do not recall the exact value, but the USA was at about $44 per troy ounce 
for Gold and the rest of the world was double or triple!

When this happened, our coins and paper money were no longer backed by "cash 
on hand" or you can only mint and print coins and bills equal to the gold 
and silver value in the treasury! We used the GNP and all sorts of other 
worthless devices to give the worthless coins and bills "value".

The only coin worth face value after the .90% Silver was removed from the 
dime, quarter and half dollar starting with January of 1965, was the Lincoln 
Memorial Cent. The penny was actually worth a penny!

When people saw this coming, guess what? The Lincoln Wheat Cent of 1909 
through 1958 and the Lincoln Memorial Cent of 1958 through 1961, weighed 
4.11 grams. It consisted of 95% Copper and 5% Tin and Zinc. Then in 1962, 
they left the 95% Copper alone, but used most Zinc with a little Tin! The 
weight of the coin dropped slightly, but it still contained 95% Copper.

Then as Copper rose in value, the treasury changed the Lincoln Memorial Cent 
again in 1982. Now they removed all but 4.6% of the Copper! The penny now 
contained 95.4% Zinc and a little Tin! The weight dropped a lot this time. 
Hence, the Copper penny was now not only worth less then a penny, it was 
worthless!

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter Markavage" <manualman at juno.com>
To: <hallicrafters at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2008 10:43 PM
Subject: Re: [Hallicrafters] inflation

> The value of a printed stamp, in this case 5 cents, doesn't change with
> inflation. If they printed a 5 cent today, it's value is still 5 cents. I
> will agree that the paper and printing costs have gone up from 1965 to
> 2008 but the value of the stamp in real dollars (or cents in this case)
> hasn't changed. What has changed is what you can "buy" for 5 cents today
> verses what you could buy for 5 cents in 1965. Same goes for money. A 5
> dollar bill in 1965 is still a 5 dollar bill in 2008 unless of course you
> have one where Lincoln's portrait is printed upside down or some other
> strange rare printing anomaly.
>
> Pete, wa2cwa
> http://www.manualman.com
>
>
> On Thu, 29 May 2008 11:47:56 -0700 <lrlayton at cox.net> writes:
>> Those 5 cent amateur radio stamps stamps from 1965 would cost around
>> 35 cents in todays money. A Hallicrafters SX-117 that sold for $379
>> in 1965 would be a whopping  $2584.70  now,  and todays gas at $4.00
>> would be equivalent to  59 cents a gallon back then. The problem is
>> that the dollar just isn't worth much these days!
>>
>> These numbers are from the governments own inflation calculator at
>> http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ---- Peter Markavage <manualman at juno.com> wrote:
>> > I still have several 3 cent stamps (I think they had the Statue
>> of
>> > Liberty on them) that I've never used. Plus, I still have a bunch
>> of
>> > unused 5 cent Amateur Radio stamps that they issued "back in the
>> good old
>> > days".
>> >
>> > I also have a refund check for 10 cents issued by the U. S.
>> Government to
>> > some Private in the Army back in 1951 or 52. It's amazing the
>> things you
>> > find stuck in the pages of old manuals.
>> >
>> > Pete, wa2cwa
>> > http://www.manualman.com
>> >
>> >
>> ______________________________________________________________
>>
>>
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