Trego's Mountain Ear

In 1963, I entered high school. Minimum wage was $1.25 per hour. Five silver quarters – well, 90% silver. A couple of years later, they replaced that silver currency with clad coins. As I write this, the spot price of silver is a little over $52 and ounce. Gold in 1963 was $35 an ounce. Today it’s $4250. But at 13, I wasn’t interested in gold and silver. I do remember the prices on some of the rifles. The Ithaca model 49 – looked like a lever action but was more like a single shot Martini – was going for a twenty dollar bill.

I saw one used at Cabela’s for a penny under $300. The Colteer – a single shot bolt gun from Colt – cost $19.95 new, and was priced at $400 as I viewed their inventory.

A single shot 22 bolt gun, made in 1957 – now selling for 20 times its original price.

I’m not sure that the price of gold reflects perfectly on the value of our currency – perhaps the increased value of old rifles is a better measure. In 1957, a nickel would buy a chocolate bar – and, while the chocolate bars shrank by the mid-sixties, nickel bars could still be found in 1966.

Land values – in the fifties, land in Trego was pretty well established at $30 an acre. The twenty to one ratio from old rifles doesn’t fit there – but the hundred and twenty to one ratio of gold seems closer to the increased land prices.

The Canadian dollar is now worth about 70 cents US. In my youth, when we still had silver, US coins were 90% silver, Canadian coins were 80% silver, and the Canadian dollar stayed constant at something like 90 cents US.