1975 Dollars (was RE: State of the Hobby)

I grabbed the Consumer Price Index history off the web, pasted into Excel, and applied the percentage changes cumulative from 1975. One 1998 dollar = $2.95 in 1975 dollars (ouch, those Carter administration years! Thank goodness for Greenspan) Therefore, an assembled Altair 8800 with 4x2K static RAM, serial, parallel, cassette, and bus expansion, $1880 in 1975 dollars, would be the equivalent of $5546 today. An Apple Lisa base configuration ($9995 in 1983 dollars) would be $16,169 today. Kai -----Original Message----- From: John Foust [mailto:jfoust@threedee.com] Sent: Thursday, July 01, 1999 10:45 AM To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers Subject: Re: State of the Hobby At 11:02 AM 7/1/99 -0600, you wrote: I suppose there must be a web site, somewhere, that would let you enter a date and a US dollar amount, and would show you the equivalent value in today's dollars, accounting for actual inflation, etc. in the intervening years. Which reminds me, when I was in high school, we sold candy bars to fund the purchase of a few K of RAM for the IMSAI as well as a floppy drive. each, Similarly, you'd think there would be a web site somewhere to remind people of the rapid devaluation of the value of computer equipment - say, perhaps the flip side of Moore's Law, that shows how simply purchasing and opening the box of a new computer causes a significant drop in value, followed by subsequent halvings of resale value every six months, until it quickly reaches the "nuisance fee" level mentioned above, where the cost of shipping and packing seems to exceed the street price. - John