Friday, May 14, 2010

The price of sewing has gone up

I save things.  In some circles I might be known as a pack rat.  I’d rather be referred to as a “keeper of important things.”  In my container that has snaps, hooks & eyes and other closures is an old card that used to have snaps snapped to it.

1518If you will click on the above pic, you will see that the empty card on the left is from “Penneys” and the price printed right on the card is 13¢ !  I don’t know the year that those snaps were bought, but Pennys is now known as JC Penney and certainly does not sell snaps today.  The card on the left has snaps made by Dritz and they sell for $2.29 today at JoAnn.  Same amount of snaps – 12 of them – but very different pricing!

I did a search in Bing for “calculate percentage increase” and got a formula that gave me a price increase of 1661.54%.  That’s One Thousand Six Hundred plus percent increase!   That can’t be right!  Anyone out there who knows their math?  Let me know if that percentage is right.

Actually, I got the snaps from JoAnn on sale and only paid half-price $1.14.  And using the same formula to calculate the percentage it was only a 776%+ increase.  Such a deal …

5 comments:

SusanB said...

1,661.54% more than the old price of 13 cents is correct. Remember that 100% = 1. 2.29 divided by .13 is 17.64154.

My guess is that snaps were bought at Penneys in 1960s. I started sewing in the early 70s and don't remember prices that low.

Pat said...

Thank you, Susan for letting me know that the percentage was correct. But I'm not thankful that things have increased in price at that high of a rate. I know my salary didn't! LOL

And you are probably right about the snaps from Penneys coming from the '60's. I knew it had to be sometime between 1961 and 1972.

Sunnie said...

You are so right!
A quick check in my studio revealed a card of 8 buttons for 29 cents!
evoraffn

Robbie said...

I don't think of us as 'pack rats'...my hubby and I just live by the saying 'waste not, want not'. I have some old spools of 50 wt cotton threat for 19 cents. The buttonhole twist was more expensive @ 20 cents. And the spools are made of wood. Don't you just love those 'keepers'.

Pat said...

Robbie, I also have a few of the wooden spools. My grandchildren have been fascinated by the fact that thread once came on wooden spools.