A 5 room house for $12.50, I will take it!! Always neat to see stuff like this, thanks for posting it.

Manual typing too! Couldn't just churn out a thousand on the computer then.

Can't determine if "JPW" wants 2000 or 20,000 copies. Postage back then was .02 for a normal letter, and .01 for a post card. So the advertizing cost for the direct mail was probably between .08 and .12 total.

Nice find Harold!!

I think we have a printed ad with similar pricing.

If I find it I'll post it here.

Bill

Found some...

A little Pricier though...

I suppose they didn't type each letter - more likely they typed it onto a sheet of wax or special carbon copy paper and made a bunch of prints (some systems could produce up to 500 copies from one original I think).

It would be interesting to put those prices into perspective - what did an average worker make per week back then? If he made say $3/week, wiring a house was still quite expensive for him!

Lights were much nicer looking then, too.

According to this calculator (http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi)

$12.50 in 1916 is approximately $250 today.

I'll take that!