George,

Thanks for the reference. I got Fischer's excellent book out of the library, and found a copy for $1.99 which is en route. He does have compiled lists which I will be abstracting, but my main interest is in farm equipment and to a lesser (and way more easily attainable) automotive prices from the Civil War onward as they come to flourish on farms and are now sometimes found in clumps of trees in the backs of farms. Steam machine prices vary astronomically from mfr to mfr and year to year. IC engine introduction stabilizes the wild fluctuations.

How this all plays out on farms, tenant farmers and share-cropping situations from Reconstruction up to the near total mechanization of agriculture in the 1960's is where this is pointed.

Lyle


On Aug 30, 2010, at 2:06 PM, George Miller wrote:

> Lyle,
> 
> Did you miss my posting on "Price History and Research" on HISTARCH 3 August
> 2010?  I listed several sources with compiled prices.  That is a pretty big
> wheel you are proposing to recreate.
> 
> Peace,
> George
> 
> On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 11:24 AM, Lyle E. Browning <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> 
>> With the usual apologies for cross-posting, the search for COMPILED lists
>> of prices of goods and commodities produced a flood of pointers toward the
>> sources of raw data but nothing that anyone mentioned relating to data
>> already compiled.
>> 
>> Going outside the archaeological box, there may be folks in the economic
>> history venues who have done so, but it's early days yet as even they point
>> me to sources rather than compilations. As far as farm equipment goes, even
>> the manufacturer's archivists (where they exist) wish they had such a list
>> of their own products. For instance, Sears tossed all of their info on their
>> kit houses, this being done by an earlier archivist idiot to the chagrin of
>> the later non-idiots who have been trying to recompile the info.
>> 
>> Bottom line is that if anyone is interested, and if I live long enough to
>> get the data compiled, then I will revisit the lists and have it available
>> as it seems to me that pricing is a rather valuable component of contextual
>> exploration and meandering.
>> 
>> Lyle Browning, RPA
>>