Grocery Prices 1960's

El Toro · Dec 9, 2014

My wife kept this for the recipe. This store prices came out back in the 1962. Hal

Karl in MD · Dec 9, 2014

That paper must be from Maryland or Delaware, to have Esskay scrapple listed. My dad called it Schluderberg's until he died. I remember going by the plant in Baltimore when I was a kid. I think it was originally Schluderberg and Kurdel (sp). The had a stand in Lexington market, IIRC, along with Panzer-Goetze.

tg in VA · Dec 9, 2014

I remember buying chuck roast in 1965 for 39 cents per pound. I was a student (UNC) and my roommate and I would pool our money ($7.50 each) and hit the grocery store on Thursdays which was the day the grocery specials came out. We would eat three meals a day, seven days a week for $15 and that included having girls over for dinner on the weekends.

El Toro · Dec 9, 2014

When I was station at Ft Bragg NC we asked for Scrapple at grocery stores and they never heard of it. My late father-in-law made it when they lived in Perry county PA. I'm near the PA and Delaware state lines. I like it with scrambled eggs and hot coffee. Hal

ericlb · Dec 9, 2014

well i believe it, i remember i was 10 or so late 1960's, and when we came in to the store i could go take a quarter, buy a coke from the machine, drink it there,[ to avoid paying the 5 cent deposit] then have enough left over to buy a small box of cracker jacks and 2 pieces of bubble gum,

Bernie/MA · Dec 9, 2014

There was a Shop n Save here that became Hannaford"s. I think they owned SnS. I remember tomato soup for 9 cents a can. Also used to buy a big can of spaggetti that mixed with our own hamburg would feed the 7 of us supper. Kids were little.

SweetFeet · Dec 9, 2014

El Toro,

Those prices are from before I was born - but it looks like they nearly gave away oysters!!

I just bought a pint last weekend - it was only about 3/4 full and one-third of that was just liquid. So it came to nearly $13 for a "short-shrift pint".

Wish I could see the price of the chicken.

Interesting to see Scrapple in the ad.

old · Dec 9, 2014

That is about like this can of Valvoline 10W-40 oil I have here. Wal-mart price tag for I would say early 80s says $00.88 on it and it is the old card board type can and oh by the way full

JMS/.MN · Dec 9, 2014

And what were wages and salaries back then? When I enlisted in 1964, Pvt E-1 was $68 per month.

Dblair · Dec 9, 2014

journeyman machinist in that year was 2.75 an hour . Richmond , VA.

Goose · Dec 9, 2014

In December, 1963 I went to work for a local newspaper/print shop for $1.50 per hour. We worked a 46 hour week, so with 6 hours at time and a half my weekly gross was $73.50, although I usually got more overtime than that.

And that was a typical wage for the era.

JerryS · Dec 9, 2014

Like Goose, in the mid-60s I was working for a newspaper, also making about $73 a week. Usually went grocery shopping with the wife and I noticed that at checkout every filled paper grocery bag ran about $5. In other words, if you took home 5 paper bags full of groceries, you had spent about $25. By the time I was making $150 a week, groceries were about $10 per bag. Everything's relative, I guess.

Bret4207 · Dec 9, 2014

Those were the days. I can remember my FIL buying Fays store brand (drug chain) oil in the cardboard can- 49 cents a quart. Mom would send my little sister and me to the movies with $2.00 and that got us in to the show with a soda and popcorn and a cheapy popsicle afterwards. Dad buying recaps at Monkey Wards for $11.00 each. Of course wages were a lot lower then too, but so were taxes!

JMS/.MN · Dec 9, 2014

1967, my part time college job was in a machine shop at $2.10/hr, went to 2.45. 1969, full time graveyard shift at Twin Cities Army Ammunition plant, $3.10. 1970, full time Teamster job was around $3.50-4.00, again graveyard, so I could go to college daytime. I didn"t get to sleep much back then.

JD Seller · Dec 9, 2014

Yes the prices from about 1945 until the late 1960s did not change a terrible lot.

I think it was mainly do to the fact that the dollar was linked to gold. Meaning the money supply of the US had a dollar of gold for every dollar in circulation. Then from about 1970 to finally 1976 the government went off the gold standard. So the dollar really does not mean much. It is really just an imaginary thing that floats up and down.

I can remember the inflation of the 1970s and 1980s. The prices of many common things double in just a few years.

I can remember buying Campbell's soup for 5 cents a can. Did not buy any meat or fish. We had beef and pork from the farm an did not eat fish unless we caught it. Never had store bought bread until the late 1970s.

I remember getting paid at the feed mill on Saturday. My Grand Dad would come and pick me up so I could bring home the groceries for my Mother and then my wife an I. $20-25 would buy the store bought food for two house holds for a week.

Now it takes $100-150 a week just for the wife and I anymore.

fixerupper · Dec 9, 2014

I usually went with my mom when she shopped for groceries because she was crippled from polio and needed the help. For some reason I remember one shopping trip in the mid-sixties where she ended up with a full cart. The bill was $20 and she had a fit. She never shopped in that store again because she thought the prices were so high. We rarely had a full cart because we grew all our food except for flour and sugar, some spices and soap. Five dollars was the norm.

CenTex Farmall · Dec 9, 2014

The dollar as a true fiat currency?

Ssshhh!! Nothing to see here.... move along... move along... Keep buying I-gadgets and trinkets from china...

When they went off the gold standard, Nixon managed to put us on the oil standard. When oil stops trading in dollars we have a big problem.

LAA · Dec 9, 2014

$2.50 p/bbl oil is the reason that there was little true inflation and a stable economy with plenty of manufacturing jobs in the US between the end of WWII and the Arab oil embargo in 1973.

1206SWMO · Dec 9, 2014

Mom always shopped on Friday and had a budget of $8.00 per week for a family of 4.....The rest came from our garden and livestock..She did lots of canning..

Jeff Wenner · Dec 9, 2014

Surprised me to see scrapple too! Had it for breakfast this morning myself. (us dutchmen here in central PA call it pon haus though) I don't go for the store bought stuff myself, we make our own when we butcher and we get $1.50 a lb for it. Don't know what I'd do without our homemade sausage, omdoodle,liverwurst, cracklins, souse.... Now I'm hungry again.

1206SWMO · Dec 9, 2014

My Mom had polio when she was 3...Her parents couldnt
afford a leg brace until she was 12..Before that her brothers
pulled her the 1 mile to school in a wagon.....That one room
school still stands today....I too went with her to help with the
shopping..She had 400 laying hens and sold eggs plus tended
a huge garden..

Jeff Wenner · Dec 9, 2014

1964 corn was bringing $1.13/by and soybeans $2.65. That adjusts to $8.65 and $20.30 in today's dollars!
Wouldn't mind cashing those checks this year.

Royse · Dec 9, 2014

(quoted from post at 18:46:45 12/09/14) And what were wages and salaries back then? When I enlisted in 1964, Pvt E-1 was $68 per month.

My dad always said the Army paid him $27 a day. One day a month.
That was WWII. Thankfully the Navy paid a bit more when I was in!

Grocery Prices 1960's

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