What did ammo cost a century ago?

[The Good]

I often hear about what a certain firearm cost at a certain time in history, but I've never heard anything about ammo. I never thought much about ammo costs before, but now that ammo, in my area at least, is insanely expensive, I'm wondering how it's changed over the years. So for example, around 1913, what would 50 rounds of .45 acp go for? I realize it's significantly lower because of inflation, but there must be a way we can calculate thr modern equivalent of that price.

I was thinking about how bullets haven't changed much over the past century if you compare them to almost everything else. 100 years ago you could get an adding machine larger than a modern computer.. That hundred years saw the electronic calculator make that thing look silly, only to become antiquated itself, as a device the size of a typical 80s calculator can now make video calls and access more information than every library on the planet. Bullets have probably improved, but the fact that a bullet from that time even closely resembles a modern bullet is amazing. My point here isn't that bullets need to improve with the times. My feeling is that bullets a century ago were way ahead of their time. Did people at the time know how ground breaking the technology they had was? Was it expensive to manufacture ammunition? Could people afford to practice shooting back then?

 

[Dr.Rob]

You didn't have a wide variety of handgun bullets then. Lead round nose, semi wadcutter or full metal jacket was about it.

Ammunition wasn't terribly expensive but 100 years ago WW1 hadn't yet happened. You bought your guns and ammo at a hardware store, or maybe Sears.

Sears ad I found from 1913 shows .22 shorts for 19 cents per hundred, shotgun shells (long brass, smokeless) were $1.88/100

A pack of Fatima cigarettes ran 15 cents.

I found a commercial Peters ammunition catalog from 1913 listing for 45 Colt Automatic $30/1000 that works out to $1.50/50... if you were buying wholesale. Another retail ad for .56-46 Spencer $40 per 1000 rounds. $40 was a LOT of money in 1913.

A first class stamp was 2 cents. A Model T Ford was $500. A Colt Government model 45 was MSRP'd at $22, a pocket model .32 for $15. Genuine mother of pearl grips cost an extra 5 dollars. A single action Army ran $15.50, a New Service target model the princely sum of $27.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

What you gotta watch when envying those old prices is that today's money is vastly inflated (the economy does undergo deflation and inflation cycles but the economy tends toward inflation).

The cowboy or frontier soldier pay of $25 to $40 a month was in an era when a mug of beer and a "free lunch" was a nickel. 1897 $25 TO $40 a month ($639 to $1,022 adjusted for inflation)

I took some prices for Marlin 1893 and Winchester 1894 rifles in .30-30 ($12) from the 1897 Sears and Roebuck catalog ($307 adjusted for inflation).

1897 Sears, Roebuck & Co prices
(OK a little over a century)
.22 BB cap, 100 rd box, 14 cents.
.22 CB cap, 100 rd box, 22 cents.
.22 Short, 50 rd box, 12 cents.
.22 Long, 50 rd box, 15 cents.
.22 Long Rifle, 50 rd box, 15 cents.
.22 Extra Long, 100 rd box, 46 cents.
.22 Winchester Rimfire [WRF], 50 rd box, 24 cents.
.44 Flat Winchester Model 66 rimfire, 50 rd box, 62 cents.
.56-56 Spencer carbine rimfire, 25 rd box, 52 cents.
.44 Winchester Model 1873, 50 rd box, 70 cents.
.30 Winchester Smokeless 1894, 20 rd box, 75 cents.
.30 Winchester Smokeless 1894, 100 rd box, $3.20.
12ga Clay pigeon, 25 rd box 33 cents, 100 rds $1.41
12ga Goose (BB), 25 rd box 38 cents, 100 rds $1.45
12ga Buckshot, 25 rd box 40 cents, 100 rds $1.54.

Take the 1897 price of 100rds buckshot ($1.54) in one hand, take the story of Billy the Kid's jailer loading his shotgun with 18 silver dimes ($1.80) per barrel in a double in the other, and weigh that tall tale for credibility.

 

[Jim K]

I have used a multiple of 40 to convert c. 1900 prices to modern dollars. I know that is not what others use, and that it obviously does not work across the board, but it seems good for most items. So a SAA Colt advertised for $17 would have cost the equivalent of $680, about the cost of a decent good quality handgun today (remember that in, say, 1900, SAA Colts were not objects of worship - they were just guns, somewhat dated and on the verge of obsolescence).

When you convert the prices Carl gives to modern money using that conversion, they don't look so cheap.

For English pounds of the same period, I use a multiple of 200 to convert pounds to modern dollars. Which is why I laugh when I read in some "carefully researched" book about that period in England, that someone tipped a porter a pound or that a detective had to find out which of hundreds of five pound notes a small shop took from a suspect. (A small shop keeper could be in business for years without ever seeing a five pound note, the equivalent of a $1000 bill.)

Just for gun interest, some luxury items, like guns, were priced in guineas; a guinea was a pound and a shilling or 21 shillings, or roughly $210.

Greener (The Gun - 1910) shows his prices in pounds, though. His best double hammerless shotguns run 73 pounds, 10 shillings, or $14,700, and his best double rifle is 84 pounds, or $16,800.

Edited to add. I almost forgot that the OP asked about ammo. Greener shows "best" 12 gauge shotshells for 10/ 6 (10 shllings sixpence or about $105) per hundred. Other grades range from seven and six to eight and nine.

Jim

 

[jaguarxk120]

Actually if you use a inflation calculator and start comparing prices, todays prices are much cheaper than 100 years ago.

But as pointed out this does not apply to all things.

 

[Dr.Rob]

I book marked this as a resource:

http://cartridgecollectors.org/ammunition-catalogs/Peters

Note: 30 Luger was listed, 9mm was not. $26/1000 it was pricey!

 

[Carl N. Brown]

In the early 20th Century, .30 Luger was a commercial round and more popular in America than the 9mm which was developed for the German military.

(Good link: I remember Peters ammo from the 1950s when I first was taken plinking.)

 

[huntsman]

Regardless of the price I'll bet there was far less ammo fired in leisurely activity 100 years ago, A 1911 and 1k in ammo for $55.00 would probably be considered a two generation investment not a years worth of shooting.

 

[boogieman]

I love these comparisons. My mom told me about her Father who was a master carpenter for Colonial Boat works (Millville, NJ) made about $12 a week when she was little. She was born in 39 so we are talking early 40's. If you use 40 as a multiplier that works out to $480 a week. Because of Unions (and other factors) that same Master Carpenter makes about $1500 a week gross not including the benefits. Looking at the prices consider that $2 for 100 buckshot is 17% of a weekly wage. Today 100 buckshot costs about $150+- or 10% of the weekly wage. So I think its fair to say that ammo is 1/2+- the cost that it was then.

 

[Jim K]

Huntsman wrote, " I'll bet there was far less ammo fired in leisurely activity 100 years ago."

You might lose. In the U.S. of 1913 there was a lot more open space, a lot more hunting and a lot more shooting. Game limits were just being introduced. The passenger pigeon, whose flocks had darkened the skies 30 years before, had become extinct (the last one died in a zoo in 1914) but other game was still plentiful in most states.

Shooting was common at garden parties and as a general sport aside from hunting. In some areas, almost every man, and many women, carried guns. Of course there were fewer people, but I suspect that on a per capita basis, there was as much or more ammo fired a century ago.

Boogieman, for the 1930's I use a factor of 35, so his salary would have been about $420 a week (with a much lower tax rate and no sales taxes). Of course, the factors I mentioned don't work out all the time, but I have found them useful.

Jim