132-year-old rifle found propped against a national park tree
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
When I was in my 20s, some friends and I would make long treks into the deep off-road parts of it to explore it precisely because so few people had been there in modern times. Back then, we made our way into areas where we were probably the first humans to come through since the 19th century. The area is actually littered with archaeological artifacts that remain undisturbed. Those were fun times.
It appears it would have been between 1 and 3 weeks wages for someone in a job where they would carry a gun:
http://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2012/01/wh...
A somewhat decent low skill job these days pays $30,000-35,000, which puts the comparison in the ballpark of $500, not $5,000.
I experienced this when I went to Colombia. Their peso generally goes for a quarter to a third of a dollar. But prices are also cheaper. Something that costs a dollar here will cost one or two pesos there. So there's the multiplier of currency / price difference.
There's also the multiplier of the amount of money people make. This one's harder to nail down, but just because something costs $600 in real money doesn't mean that that will feel like $600 coming out of your pocket when you spend it. I can spend $600 weekly without batting an eye, but someone at my relative social station in Colombia probably wouldn't be able to, their salary would be less even accounting for the currency difference.
There's also access to credit. A purchase is much easier to make when you can get someone to finance it for you.
There's a lot more to relative value than just currency differences.
The reason there's a difference between the two is that currency exchange rates are calculated using different inputs than purchasing power rates are. Purchasing power compares things like milk and eggs and gas whereas currency exchange is mostly limited to fairly liquid financial instruments like bank notes and bond instruments.
Whether it's equivalent current value is $600 (as posted elsewhere) or $5400, both numbers are believable. The functional difference between a modern $600 rifle and a $5400 one is, to most casual observers, minimal - though the owner may have reason to pay $4800 for that difference.
Don't let the raw numbers fool you - this was an everyman's gun. A good one, yes. Still though, an everyman's gun.
Actually, I've been able to hang onto my most recent pair for well over a year now. The trick is never taking them out of the car. The way they get lost is you wear them from your car into some house and take them off.
Yes, similar rifles can be had around $600.
There's an old (as in 1-2 centuries) aphorism that a good handgun costs about an ounce of gold. True then, true today; doesn't matter how currency fluctuates, solidly built classic products retain value.
Secondhand - Thredup and sites like it.
Marshall's, TJ Maxx, Men's Warehouse, etc. You can also travel to Hong Kong, Beijing, or one of many other cities in Asia and have them tailored for much less than retail department store prices.
So it's a nice system. It's a shame that the US hasn't adopted it.
News and entertainment media will sometimes find an article of clothing with identifying marks in Africa and trace it back to the original owner as an anecdote for a story about some aspect of the industry.
But that aspect aside, there are slim pickings with respect to less casual attire in charity resale shops, especially if you stray too far from median sizes. Your best bet at finding a suit that you might actually want to wear is at estate sales for the recently deceased, or stores supplied by the unclaimed airline baggage clearinghouse in Alabama. The higher the value of the clothing, the less likely the owner is to give it up willingly.
I don't know who told you we haven't adopted that system. Tell them to look for a Salvation Army, they're like the Star Buck's of charity shops around here, there's one on every corner.
Likely because partly what is considered a "good" handgun advances with the state of the art, partly modern insurance and regulatory requirements drive up modern manufacturing costs, and partly because of market dynamics for the use cases a handgun is put to. If you were mass manufacturing a mid-19th century handgun, with no improvements in its tech or metallurgy, without having to pay for the operational insurance and regulatory overhead costs, and it was accepted by the firearms-purchasing public in the same per capita adoption rates as back when it was originally produced, I can easily see it being a lot less expensive. But the purchasing public seems to seek specific characteristics in modern firearms, these characteristics don't appear to align with "use old tech", and this tends to set a floor price from what I can tell as a casual user.
Interestingly, replica mid- to late-19th century handguns sell for around the $600+ USD mark in the US, for the enthusiast market. Well-cared for, lightly-used firearms are reasonably close to quality as new for most non-enthusiast level users, and even many enthusiast users. So if inexpensive is what you are looking for, a used firearm from a trusted user goes for roughly half to 2/3 of new prices these days.
As someone who collects both, I find it amusingly similar to camera gear. Nikon vs. Canon, Glock vs. Sig, 9mm vs .45 or was it APS-C vs. Full-Frame? In both cases there exists the mass-produced item most analogous to the "tree find". Glocks and DSLRs found at big box stores. Then there are collectibles such as Leica or something from the Springfield Custom shop, or Les Baer. I could go on.
At any rate, I think some things haven't changed, craftsmanship is still valued and prized, but the common purchase is definitely of the more affordable items such as the mentioned $600 price point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchangeable_parts#Late_19t...
Somewhat like how muscle cars from the 60s have in some cases appreciated due to baby boomers.
For contrast, Marlin sells a rifle functionally similar to the one discovered, also of vintage design (1894), for $729: http://www.galleryofguns.com/genie/default.aspx?item=1894
Unlike most other products, there is really no room for cost-cutting of parts on a firearm. A dishwasher or vacuum cleaner may be cheaply made and still satisfy use for upwards of a decade until it breaks and the owner, with only mild annoyance, replaces it (speaking from personal experience of late); solid steel components both durable and replaceable progressively give way to breakable & irreplaceable parts, tolerated by society because prices drop. A firearm, however, has serious demands for durability and safety (breakage can gravely harm the user, directly or indirectly), necessitating solid steel parts meticulously milled (or comparably advanced polymers molded to likewise high standards); it still takes about the same amount of work to make one today as 120 years ago, with little room for cost-cutting. That durability also means they don't really wear out (taking decades/centuries instead of months or years), so older items retain their value and stabilize the price of new ones. Ergo, the cost - relative to other invariant standards like mundane labor or precious metals - has remained largely unchanged.
If you think about it, a gun is nothing more than a collection of milled (or cast) metal parts. A certain level of precision is required, but the material and manufacturing costs (with automated CNC) are pretty small.
There are a number of economics papers which evaluate economies in non-currency units, like hours of labor or commodity prices like gold or oil. It can illuminate strengthening or weakening efficiencies that a strict price analysis can miss.
https://www.jupiterartland.org/artwork/landscape-with-gun-an...
http://www.littlesparta.org.uk/
Can't wait to go back!
Little Sparta is on another level though - the whole place is a work of art.
I'm also keen to go to the Garden of Cosmic Speculation - but it's not open very often:
The Garden of Cosmic Speculation, had me at its name. I'll be going along there to. Cheers, pal. Thank you very much.
I'm not into firearms, but rifles like this are an object lesson in how to design something so that it'll last.
I'm Mr. Skeptical... It's hard to believe with the tree growth and over a hundred years of weather that the gun stayed propped up like that. It does look a little wedged between two trunks but wow...
http://www.nps.gov/grba/naturescience/treesandshrubs.htm
One of those species is famously long lived (and slow growing):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juniperus_scopulorum
Reaching ~5-6 meters and living hundreds of years.
I guess the other is similar, though no mention of ages in the wiki article:
(Grass grows from the bottom, that's why animals can eat it without harming it.)
It was at least 4862 years old before being cut down for study!