You won't believe the prices. These three price sheets will take you back to the state of the US paper currency 63 years ago in January 1953. Please keep in mind that price column on the far right is for NEW notes.
Yeah, but the average wage yearly then was $4011.00 and you could buy a new home for under between about 8,000 and 18,000 depending on size. Houses that now go for around 300,000 or more in some areas of the country were built and sold for under 10,000. ... Gas was .20 or .22 cents per gallon. Still, it's a great piece of history to have that!
$25 in 1953 is equivalent to about $222 today when adjusted for inflation. It's about a 9 times difference for that specific amount. Plus increases in demand in the present market compared to then would make new condition values even higher.
You can really see that there weren't many collectors of small-size notes in 1953: not just in the low prices, but in the way the scarcer notes carried little or no premium over the common ones. In the 1928 notes, the fairly rare red-seal $1 was barely priced higher than the quite common blue-seal $1, and wasn't even worth pricing in below new condition! And in the 1935 notes, the North Africa and Hawaii issues had no premium at all over the generic blue seals. Even in 1953, though, there were enough collectors to bid up the price of the 1933 $10....
I will try to post some prices from a 1964 Red Book (published in 1963), I also have a 1968 COINage Magazine with a big notice on the front saying "LAST MONTH TO REDEEM SILVER CERTIFICATES" It also has an article about the new 1968 proof set.
You gotta wonder where those notes are now, in 2016. It would be interesting to see where they've wound up.
I completely understand that it's not fair to compare 1953 prices to today's prices, but being able to buy 1935A SC experimental "R" and "S" notes for a dollar over face is incredible, not to mention the WWII notes from Hawaii and N.Africa for 50 cents over face.
