A few months ago, my mother in law sent my wife an old copy of Woman's Day magazine.  My wife loves dolls, and the January 1965 issue of Woman's Day featured articles on dolls and doll collecting (along with many other articles that would fit right in with today's magazines, such as "How to Have a New Figure for the New Year".)

What grabbed my attention, though, was the cover price of the magazine: just 15 cents.

I wondered how the price of magazines has changed over the last 42 years, measured in dollars and in gold.  And it didn't take long to find out!

Woman's Day is still being published, and a quick trip to it's web site showed that the current cover price is $2.79.  Using the London PM gold fix for 4/27/2007 of $21.78/gram, we see that today's cover price is about 0.128 gg.  And in 1965?  Gold was $1.14/gram, so the 1965 cover price was 0.132 gg.

Let's see… looks like the price is virtually unchanged over the last 42 years when measured in gold, but up a whopping 1,860% measured in dollars!

I don't think the magazine is 19 times bigger, or 19 times better… I think the dollar has shrunk to 1/19th of it's former self.

It's a great example of why I like to track prices in gold!