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I bet there were a lot of essays written about Aardvarks at that time.

They should charge $0.01 for the first volume and twice as much for each successive volume.

Do you remember how much the B volume cost?

I want to say $39.99, but I'm not entirely sure of that number.

Off by an order of magnitude, <$3.99 each:

“Funk & Wagnalls volumes were typically sold in supermarkets as part of a “book-a-week” program. When Mr. Moser came up with the idea of reducing the normal charge to just pennies for the first volume…

The entire 27-volume Funk & Wagnalls set — along with the free two-volume dictionary, another sweetener dreamed up by Mr. Moser — cost a little more than $100.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/obituaries/Stanley-Moser-...

So this is how I find out how profoundly cheap my dad was :).

Thanks.

Well, $3.99 in 1953 (the first year the encyclopedia was offered in supermarkets, ATW) is $45.50 now, according to https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm.

For 27 volumes, that works out to $1228.50. Your dad wasn't that cheap. :-)