how did people buy really cheap stuff in the olden days when pounds were worth much more ? Surely 1 pence would be paying too much in certain situations
In: Other
When the US eliminated the half-cent the one-cent had comparable buying power as a quarter does today. Think exactly what you can actually buy with a single quarter – were talking a single small bolt from the hardware store, or a single banana in many places. Part of the issue you’re looking at is that today we have a smallest increment of money that’s ridiculously small and not actually useful in many circumstances.
Go back further to when a penny had “buying power” – a hundred years or so before then. For one they had half-pennies and quarter-pennies or other low value coins depending on which country you lived in which helped for small purchases. They also batch sold things – for example in the US there’s a nail size system where nails are sized in pennies (10 penny nail, 8 penny nail – written 10d and 8d). These originate from a few hundred years ago when you’d buy a batch of 100 nails and the 10d nail was a nail size where you paid 10 pennies for 100.
Another factor – consumerism maybe wasn’t such a big thing pre-industrial revolution. The only people buying stuff on a whim were mostly people buying expensive things. The folks buying super cheap stuff weren’t often taking an entire day off work to walk a few miles to the market to spent a farthing (1/4 penny) on a single widget- they’d mostly go on a supply run where they bought as much as what they could for the week/month until the next market.
Latest Answers