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!
Comments on Woman's Day Priced in Gold
Hello,
I was excited to find your site but am a little dissapointed in the short term timescales of your charts – I have been costing many things like labour and all metal commodities in terms of gold for about twenty years now but like your format and site.
I would really like to be able to value average wages in the mining industry since the 19th century – my research shows that the average weekly wage for a mine worker in Australia has been around one ounce of gold and has not changed much in over 150yrs!!!!!
Anyway all the best with your site
Alan