1930's Prices !

<p>I came across a 1936 Contax RF ad with prices recently, and I was shocked to say the least! The top model with fast glass was $371 (1936) US dollars! A brand new Buick was only $700 in 1936 !</p>

<p>In perspective, an M7 or M8 with fast glass will cost around half a Buick today too.</p>

<p>My father was a policeman in 1936 in a small upstate NY city. His take home pay was almost $30 a week. And that was almost double what an average laborer made in 1936. So we are talking 13 weeks pay to afford the Contax outfit.Six months pay for a laborer!</p>

<p>So my question is : who the heck did Leitz and Contax sell all those pretty cameras to in the 1930's? Were there enough well heeled to support this high end camera industry? Why were the prices so high?</p><div></div>

<p>Funny, I have a similar price sheet that came with my 1936 (I think) Contax. And yes, I thought the same thing about the prices!</p>

<p>Wow! According to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator (<a href="http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl">http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl</a> ) :<br>

What cost <strong>$373</strong> in 1936 would cost <strong>$5,791.80</strong> in 2009...<br>

K.</p>

<p>Interesting, Steve.</p>

<p>People who got their money out of the stock market in time in 1929, who didn't invest with borrowed money, who didn't believe RCA stock would go up forever.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>who the heck did Leitz and Contax sell all those pretty cameras to in the 1930's? Were there enough well heeled to support this high end camera industry? Why were the prices so high?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>It was Zeiss Ikon who made and sold them, Contax merely their brand name. Not being the last of their lines, obviously they sold well enough. (Unlike the even more expensive Contaflex TLR.) They were simply the bleeding edge, the best engineered, made with the same precision as scientific instruments, but I thought everyone already knew that.</p>

<p>Why does the Nikon D3 cost so much? And the Canon 1Ds? And the Mamiya AFD? And the Hasselblad H2? And the Leica S2? Who actually buy these things?</p>

<p>Yeah it's the H4D now. But you get the idea.</p>

<p><em>"What cost <strong>$373</strong> in 1936 would cost <strong>$5,791.80</strong> in 2009"</em><br>

Which is about what it would cost for a new Leica MP w/ 50mm Summicron pre-asph.......so maybe not too shocking</p>

<p>My father used a Leica screw-mount camera and three lenses (35mm, 50mm, and 73mm) during World War II while stationed in numerous countries, but before he died in 2003 I carelessly forgot to ask him how he afforded those purchases inasmuch as he was in his early 20s in the early 1940s and was a USAAF pilot.</p><div></div>

<p>Terry, that's an astonishing photograph, thanks for letting us see it.</p>

<p>Hey, Steve, a lot of scans of prints I made from my father's WWII/Italy negatives are at my Flickr site, below, if you are interested in seeing many of them.<br>

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/21652620@N08/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/21652620@N08/</a></p>

<p>If a NY city cop paid $30 a week I guess a USAF pilot would be paid double (correct me if Iam wrong).<br>

To use about 1 or 2 month's wages to buy a leica I am not surprised even nowadays.<br>

I guess it's the buying power of US$300 is more in the 30's than now.</p>

 

<p>Neat portrait Terry. Thanks -</p>

<p>Thanks Terry for sharing those astounding 1945 pictures !</p>

<p>Didier</p>