In 1925, a Thompson cost $250?

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IMtheNRA

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I was watching a show on the History Channel about small arms of the US forces in WWII. Before a commercial break, a "factoid" flashed on the screen claiming that in 1925, one could mail-order a full-auto Thompson .45 submachine gun for "about $250".

That seems like a lot of money in 1925. I have not looked up the present value of a 1925 dollar, but I suspect that that price is equivalent to several thousand dollars today. It may actually be more than what those guns are selling for right now.

If this is consistent with the price trends of small arms, then are guns today more affordable to the general public than they were in the early 20th century?

What did 1911s and Hi-Powers sell for when they first hit the market? I think this would be an interesting study.
 
Sounds about right, it was a fortune then. Thats the real reason Thompson had a hard time selling them. Even during WW2 the Thompsons were very expensive to make thats the only reason they came out with the "grease gun" ($15). Thompson even mounted them on aircraft to try to sell some to the Army Air Corp, price was always the problem.
 
I forgot to mention that during the segment on the Thompson subgun use in WWII, the narrator said that the price to the US military was over $300 each! That must have been one heck of a complicated, labor-intensive manufacturing process!
 
What did 1911s and Hi-Powers sell for when they first hit the market? I think this would be an interesting study.
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I found this little tidbit on 1911's.

http://www.rt66.com/~korteng/SmallArms/M1911A1.htm

Among the M1911s sold during the prewar years were a group of approximately 100 pistols purchased through Springfield Armory by National Rifle Association (NRA) Life Members and members of NRA-affiliated clubs. Both Colt- and Springfield Armory-produced examples were included in this program. These pistols carried a purchase price of $16 each and were stamped with the letters "NRA" on the right side of the frame below the serial number.
Click to expand...

I wonder if any of those 100 pistols are still around and what they are worth today!?
 
It was complex and time consuming to manufacture. The receiver was milled from a single billet of steel, over 50% of which ended up as chips and swath on the floor. IIRC it took over 200 separate milling and finishing steps to make a Thompson receiver.

When the Blish lock and separate hammer were dropped and the firing pin fixed on the bolt in the M1A1 Thompson things got a little less complex, but it still took about 4 times as long to make a Thompson as it did a grease gun.

The cost of a Thompson in 1925 was up to 2 months wages, or more, for many workers.
 
According to Jim Keenan's 30:1 ratio, that would be $7,500 smackeroos in today's geld. :what: I would have guessed about $10,000 myself. A new car was about $250 then, also, IIRC.
 
I have a friend who was offered a cherry Thompson by an elderly woman in exchange for home improvement he did for her. Her father bought it in the 20's at a hardware store in Trenton, NJ. Being a law abiding NJ resident and having a fear of the BATF he passed on taking it. So far as he knows it's still in a steamer trunk in her attic.
 
That is why the $200 transfer fee was imposed in 1934. Made it very costly to get a full-auto.
 
30:1 sounds about right. In the 20's Ford paid their autoworkers $5 a day, which was considered exceptional by industry standards.
 
Hi, guys,

I have worked with the CPI and with the catalogs of the day, and I think the CPI figures are too low. I admit it is hard to make comparisons because there just are so few manufactured products today that are made the same way and in the same place as they were then. For example, clothing prices have been kept down by imports from Asian and African "sweat shops", and gun prices by new manufacturing methods. In the other direction, today's cars are orders of magnitude more complex and precision made than a 1938 Ford.

So, some stuff works, and some doesn't. For example, gas in 1939 was $.08 a gallon, which at 1-30 would be $2.40; it is actually about $1.45 here now. But a restaurant menu of 1938 shows cold sandwiches at $.10, beer at .10 and soft drinks at .05, close to the prices at the same restaurant today. Pepsi and Coke were both a nickel, but Pepsi was "twice as much" (12 ounces); a 12 ounce can today is $1 at the most from a vending machine. Sirloin steak was, IIRC, $.10 a pound at the meat market, chicken about twice as much. Why? Because at that time, all chickens were "free range"; prices went down because chicken farmers developed huge breeding and feeding operations. So when Hoover promised a "chicken in every pot", he was promising the most expensive meat, not the cheapest.

One thing for sure. Prices have gone up, but then so have wages. Today's wages would have seemed a fortune to the workers of the 1930's. Even in 1957, I started government work at $3420 per year and thought it was pretty good starting pay; the same GS grade today is about $21k. A friend, who was an executive with an auto parts company, made $25k, and I thought he was filthy rich.

In any event, that $200 transfer tax was intended to be prohibitory. The initial proposal by Cummings was for taxes of .05 per round on .22 and shotgun shells, .10 on rifle ammo, $5 on shotguns, $20 on rifles and $50 on handguns, plus the $200 on machineguns. All Congress would go along with was the machinegun law, which became the National Firearms Act.

Jim
 
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