Learning the value of money


I've never been a math wizard, and something that I recall that was very difficult for me as a kid was understanding the value of money. This old ad, that I just found on the internet, reminded me of that.

No, I'm not old enough to have ever bought a glass of Coca-Cola for a nickel, but I am old enough to remember penny candy, and nickel candy. There was a drugstore not far from my elementary school where we kids would go to buy candy, and the nice man behind the counter would often ask us how much money we had so he could help us figure out how much candy we could buy. And he probably was a nice man, but the whole thing make my little brain suspicious! So I set out to learn the value of money.

At this age, in the 1960s, I knew that five cents would buy me a LOT of candy, and a dime or a quarter would buy me enough candy that I could get sick on it. Yep, that was my first reference point for money - how much money it took to get sick on candy!

After that, going into the 1970s, I determined how much money it would cost to buy a color TV ($300) and how much a new car would cost ($2,000). There was nothing more expensive than a new car, so that's where I stopped. And from that point on I didn't do math, I did some kind of reference. I still do it. You can see it nowadays when people say that something "costs no more than a movie ticket" or a "Starbucks coffee." No math needed!

I've never had to deal with foreign currency, but it's gotta be confusing. When I used to read Paddington Bear books as a kid they would mention pounds, and shillings, and pence, and I'd just skim over it. I still do that when reading about foreign money, wondering how many yen it would take to buy a candy bar?

But as a time-traveler I do try to figure out the value of money in a given time and a given place. Our 21st-Century mindset has as much difficulty doing the translation of the value of money "back in the day" as if we were dropped in a foreign country. How many francs would I need to buy a new car? A color TV?

By the way, as I write this, in September of 2021, the price of a color TV (High Definition and everything) is the same as it was when I was a kid in the 1970s, because technology has changed. Cars are more expensive, and it often shocks me to see the price of one of those big pickup trucks that go by me all of the time here in the Phoenix area.

The best that I can do is make educated guesses, and my best guess is that when that ad was painted on the wall, five cents got you a 6-ounce glass of Coca-Cola at the soda fountain. Yes, they were served in tiny glasses like that, it was expensive! If I were to time-travel back to those days with my wallet I'd carry a Big Gulp cup, thrown down several dollars and say, "fill it up!" to their astonishment.

Thank you for time-traveling with me!

Image from the Duke University Library Digital Collections.
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