[Milsurplus] Fair Radio Sales - Inflation

[Mike Morrow]

>I would love to go back in time to purchase the excellent nos
>equipment for a few dollars.

Be careful what you wish for.

Adjust for inflation, and you'll often find that many of those attractive prices of yesteryear are well higher than typically found today on (horrors and abominations!) ebay.

IIRC, a well used Fair Radio BC-348 went for about $70 in 1968, without mounting.  That would be close to $400 today.  ARB receivers in the late 1940s were often sold at $50, which is near $500 today.  Even the BC-375-E typically went for $50 then.  More recently, items like the R-105/ARR-15 and AN/ARC-2 have sold on ebay for well below their adjusted old surplus prices.  On ebay I picked up a *new-condition* BC-348-Q complete with mounting for $300, a used BC-348-P complete with mounting for $150, and a NIB ARB with mounting for $150, all within the last few years.  Even the common command set gear prices of yesteryear don't look so attractive when the time value of money is factored in.

In terms of real dollars, some of this stuff has never ever been cheaper.  The things that do seem much more expensive in real dollars today are racks, mountings, control boxes, modulators, etc., plus VT-4C and VT-25 tubes.  But many of the auxilary devices were not offered by the typical surplus merchant of 40 or more years ago.  Just not enough ham interest, I guess.

Sure, at a hamfest you expect stuff to be give-away prices.  I bought a new T-16/ARC-5 for $10 and a new-after-depot-refurbishment BC-611-F for $20 in the early 1980s at the Warren Ohio hamfest.  Hamfests do not represent fair market value.

When I look at the surplus ads that are more than 40 years old in CQ and 73, I often wonder how hams justified the high expense of many common items, adjusted to today's real dollars.

The same effects apply, say, to the latest "sky is falling" BS about gasoline prices.  In May 1981, in the southeast US a gallon of unleaded regular peaked at $1.41.  Adjust for inflation and you get an equivalent price in today's dollars of $3.39.  Today, I filled my tank at $3.88 per gallon, all of 14 percent higher than the price 27 years ago.  The sky wasn't falling in 1981, and it's not in 2008 either.

Next time anyone is drooling at old prices, he should do some then/now comparisons using this Bureau of Labor Statistics calculator ("the government cooks the books" nuts need not bother):

http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl

One isn't living in the real world if one ignores the time value of money.

Mike / KK5F