1861 Seated Quarter Update

[bergie]

I was doing some more research on the 1861 Seated quarter I posted a week or so ago and found this great site. When I find an old coin, maybe you are the same, I wonder how much it would be like losing today and how ticked off they must have been to lose it. The following site you can find out. The quarter I found would have been like losing $5.71 today (or course not considering silver value or collector value). Note when you use this, it doesn't tell you how, but enter coins as 0.10, 0.25 etc, and don't use any words like cent or quarter. If you don't do it right it will give you dollars instead of coin value. It's good starting in the year 1800. Bergie
http://www.westegg.com/inflation/

 

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[halfdime]

Whenever I find a significant old coin, I wonder the same thing! A couple years ago, I found an 1831 Bust Half and thought someone really suffered for losing it. In today's terms, that's a $9.61 loss; painful, but not catastrophic I guess.

 

[minton7]

cool site.... I always wonder the same thing myself

 

[allen]

i'll be checking that site out later...

 

[Groovedymond]

Thank you so much for that website! That is awesome! Thank you! I've bookmarked it!

 

[EDDE]

Great page
i always wondered about the inflation rate of old lost coinage

 

[Mirage]

Very Interesting. It does put some numbers out there. But I think part of the picture is missing. What were the average yearly earnings at the time compared to what they are today? I don't think people back then made as much (we have a higher standard of living today). Or maybe they just didn't have electric bills, cell phone bills, automobile payments so they didn't need as much money....

Whenever I find a significant old coin, I wonder the same thing! A couple years ago, I found an 1831 Bust Half and thought someone really suffered for losing it. In today's terms, that's a $9.61 loss; painful, but not catastrophic I guess.

If I lost $10. It would bug me but I wouldn't spend a lot of time looking for it. However, if I made half of what I do then I would probably value that $10 a lot more.

Bob

 

[Captn SE]

But it sure is a lot easier to lose a single quarter or half out of your pocket than it is to lose $9.61 or $5.71 out of your wallet!

HH,
CAPTN SE
Dan

 

[BuckleBoy]

Ya know...I don't know if this site is correct.  I think we may be too anxious to believe what we see online.


Capped Bust Half Dollar would've been a LOT more money today than 9 bucks.  How many Half Dollars were in folks' pockets then?  At that rate, you'd think we'd be finding more of them!  And even more of the smaller denomination coins.  In 1812, they were selling land in the Old Northwest Territory (above the Ohio River) at a DOLLAR an acre, by the way...


My hunch is that the website is incorrect.



Regards,



Buckleboy

 

[halfdime]

Very Interesting. It does put some numbers out there. But I think part of the picture is missing. What were the average yearly earnings at the time compared to what they are today? I don't think people back then made as much (we have a higher standard of living today). Or maybe they just didn't have electric bills, cell phone bills, automobile payments so they didn't need as much money....

Whenever I find a significant old coin, I wonder the same thing! A couple years ago, I found an 1831 Bust Half and thought someone really suffered for losing it. In today's terms, that's a $9.61 loss; painful, but not catastrophic I guess.

If I lost $10. It would bug me but I wouldn't spend a lot of time looking for it. However, if I made half of what I do then I would probably value that $10 a lot more.

Bob

I'm reading a book about the Brooklyn Bridge, built in the 1870's. Laborers on the bridge were making little more than $2 a day at a time when they would ordinarily make that in a week or two. Losing a 50 cent piece, or even a quarter, could have been a real hardship (or worse, depending on the wife ).

 

[BuckleBoy]

Try this site too. It has several ways to compare worth.

http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/

 

[LI Tom]

Until the U.S. raised the fixed price of gold convertable to the Dollar in the 1930's,the overall cost of living changed little from the time the time of the founding of the U.S.,individual prices fluctuated due to supply and demand but overall the value of the dollar remained fairly stable.Once the Bretton Woods agreement collapsed in 1971,which ended all international monies convertabilty into gold and the World went on Fiat money,the inflation Genie was out of the bottle and and all Fiat money steadily lost value.Fiat money,after all is just paper,backed by nothing.

 

[curbdiggercarl57]

Cool site, thanks for the info.

 

[hollowpointred]

thats a cool site Phillip! thanks for posting it.

 

[bergie]

I have questions about it too. I mean I hear my dad saying a hotdog was a nickel when he was a kid in the 40s, so in 1861 you must have been able to get a whole meal for a few cents. I have to believe that 25 cents in 1861 would have been enough to buy many meals, for example, so it doesn't seem equal to just $5.71, which would buy one discount meal today.