Stuff that was prohibitly expensive in the past but now cheap and taken for granted

Run_to_da_hills

There is a number of things that would have been considered a luxury when we were growing up but are now so cheap we don’t think too much when we need them.

Colour TV. I can remember my old man paying over £600 for a colour TV in the 70's. At the time those would have been well in excess of a months wages. In fact it was quite common for people to rent colour TVs from RTV rentals or get them on HP.

A VCR top loader was around the same price.( I managed to pick one up for the equivalent of £300, a swap for a Renault 5TL with the clutch gone)

Landline Trunk calls. The P&T had the country divided in three zones. Dublin 01 (Local) Kildare, Wicklow and Louth, (Zone 2 trunk ) and Zone 3 trunk, it was always cheaper to call home after 6pm. You would be constantly looking at your watch if you were calling Mammy from the Gaelteacht

Computers. I paid £300 for 8 megs of Ram, £400 for a scanner and £500 for a HP550 in 1995 :eek: At the time a 485 DX 266 laptop would have been in excess of 3k :eek:

Cameras. I can remember customs & excise use to quiz you if you brought a fancy camera into the country, you would be expected to have receipts etc now they don't even bat an eyelid.

Flying wasn't too long ago when you would have needed a second mortgage to fly out of the country

seamus

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

In fact it was quite uncommon for people to rent colour TVs from RTV rentals

Common, surely you mean?

We had a top-loading VCR when I was young. Broke all the time. We threw it out and there was a few years when I was approaching my teens that we would rent a VCR from xtravision for a week (think it was when I was on summer holidays or whatever) and spend the week up and down to the video shop renting out various movies. This was the late 80's/90's, not the 60's :eek:

Run_to_da_hills

seamus wrote: »

Common, surely you mean?

We had a top-loading VCR when I was young. Broke all the time. We threw it out and there was a few years when I was approaching my teens that we would rent a VCR from xtravision for a week (think it was when I was on summer holidays or whatever) and spend the week up and down to the video shop renting out various movies. This was the late 80's/90's, not the 60's :eek:

Edited, Our first VHS lasted over 5 years, and that was with regular use.

mikemac

Mitsbubishi VCR.
Cost over £400, a huge sum of money.
It's was some fancy model, the amount of dials and switches were so complex.
If you broke the remote control the shop had to order in a new one for you, that cost £70 so you can imagine the bollocking from the parents if we threw around the remote control.
There were no cheap universal remote controls, it had to be ordered in for that range of models. Or maybe the shop keeper was lying to us....

I remember newer models had some system where you enter a unique code and the VCR would recognize this and record the program.
We didn't have that.

You could rent videos from Xtravision and they threatened a 25p fine if you didn't rewind the tape for the next person

Run_to_da_hills

feelingstressed wrote: »

Mitsbubishi VCR.
Cost over £400, a huge sum of money.
It's was some fancy model, the amount of dials and switches were so complex.
If you broke the remote control the shop had to order in a new one for you, that cost £70 so you can imagine the bollocking from the parents if we threw around the remote control.
There were no cheap universal remote controls, it had to be ordered in for that range of models. Or maybe the shop keeper was lying to us....

I remember newer models had some system where you enter a unique code and the VCR would recognize this and record the program.
We didn't have that.

You could rent videos from Xtravision and they threatened a 25p fine if you didn't rewind the tape for the next person

Our remote was missing from day one as it was got SH. We had to lift a flap in the front to access a heap of complex buttons to do the tracking, change channels etc after a while it became second nature, it just ment we had to get up out of our seats. :mad:

mondeo

Some Micro computers in the 80's were mortage material.

ANXIOUS

Mobile phones and calls, I can remember they were unbelievablely priced.

Downloading stuff on dail up.

mondeo

ANXIOUS wrote: »

Mobile phones and calls, I can remember they were unbelievablely priced.

Downloading stuff on dail up.

My dads Mobile phone in the late 80's came with what looked like a suitcase attached to it. Not so portable back in those days when you drove a company car.

Run_to_da_hills

mondeo wrote: »

My dads Mobile phone in the late 80's came with what looked like a suitcase attached to it. Not so portable back in those days when you drove a company car.

I worked for the lighthouse service in the mid 80's, you would regularly get the Parks and Wildlife Service out culing gulls etc. They would communicate with radio phones that resembled something from WW2. Complete with backpack battery, and large antenna. I wouldn't like to have to pay for their calls back then. :eek:

My first phone was a NEC P100 cost me £300 secondhand in 1995 plus a years contract with Eircell for around £27 a month standing charge. :eek:

gipi

I can remember buying a music system for the princely sum of £400....and paid an additional £300 for the latest item at the time....a CD player! All in 1985!

In 1979/80 I rented a VCR - it cost £25 per month....you can buy one for that nowadays!

Run_to_da_hills

gipi wrote: »

I can remember buying a music system for the princely sum of £400....and paid an additional £300 for the latest item at the time....a CD player! All in 1985!

In 1979/80 I rented a VCR - it cost £25 per month....you can buy one for that nowadays!

When I come to think of it my folks bought a "hifi" in 1979 spent close to £400, Speakers were Mordaut Short, I ended up blowing them up at a rave more than 20 years later.

Car stereos were also expensive. I paid 250 for a Clarion and speakers (Second hand) It ended up getting nicked at the Cumberland St Market. I should have hung around and bought it back.

TheDriver

an amstrad cpc464 with a tape player and GREEN screen cost about 300 pounds back in 1987.
Or a fancy camera with a film that might have a zoom would cost 100 pounds back in 2000, thats not long ago.
I remember renting videos from the local electrical store, no such thing as xtravision back then! Or we rented a video player back in 1987, and i mean PLAYER only!

bonerm

I think I paid over IEP£400 for my first DVD player, circa 2000.

Bought another one about a month ago for €25.

kelle

My father bought us our first colour TV in 1979, at a cost of IR£450. And he was warned the "colour" would only last 5 years, but while the colour did fade througout the years we had it for 20 years - then gave it away.

I remember the monstrous music centres of the 80s that Gipi describes! They consisted of a radio stereo system with big speakers, topped by a double cassette tape deck, then topped by a record player. They were about 3feet high. They retailed at IR£400 in 1984, because I remember my cousin paid that for hers not long after starting her first job - I was so jealous!

Clothes were so expensive in the 80s. A skirt or trousers would cost IR£20, and a top IR£15. I rarely got new clothes, Mum was a good dressmaker. Nearly all my clothes as a child were hand-me-downs. But nowadays we've got Penneys and can get loads of outfits for the same price! Even though we tend to wear them a few times then throw them out.....

I got my first mobile phone in 1999. I paid IR£29.99 for it, and IR£9.99 per month rental where I got 10 minutes free calls. After the 10 mins, I paid 60p per minute peak then 40p per minute evening(after 8pm) and weekends. And that was eircell, apparently Esat it's competitor was 80p per minute!

Back in 1998/1999 when Eircell launched analogue Ready to Go, the two price plans were 80/20/20 or 50/50/20. 80p a minute for a mobile call! :eek:

Dudess

We used to get the loan of our uncle's VCR at Christmas and during the summer - it was hugely exciting...

rainbowtrout

We got our first VCR around 1990/91 and it was about £400. Can buy one now for about €30.

A lot of my friends rented TVs for their houses in college (mid to late 90s). Lots of homes didn't have second TVs back then. I doubt there's much, if any, of a rental market for TVs now as they are so cheap.

Got given out to a lot in college during the summer months for ringing Clare and Kerry phone numbers (from Limerick) because they were inland calls and would put up the phone bill. Local only meant strictly within your area code, 061 for me and not the whole 06 area.

Same with mobiles in late 90s. Texts, which at the beginning were only available to bill pay but eventually on pay as you go were 20/25p each I think.

The first computer we got at home around 1997 was a 1GB Hard Drive Dell PC, cost about £1300 :eek:

GrumPy

rainbowtrout wrote: »

We got our first VCR around 1990/91 and it was about £400. Can buy one now for about €30.

Really? that's the second time in this thread vcr's have been estimated at that price or lower. A dvd player can be picked up for as littel as €20, but purely because of the complex mechanical nature and rarity of a vcr, they usually set back upwards of €60 still.

Max Power1

GrumPy wrote: »

Really? that's the second time in this thread vcr's have been estimated at that price or lower. A dvd player can be picked up for as littel as €20, but purely because of the complex mechanical nature and rarity of a vcr, they usually set back upwards of €60 still.

+1
I bought one recently (nostalgia lol) and the cheapest I could find was €80 in argos.

rainbowtrout

GrumPy wrote: »

Really? that's the second time in this thread vcr's have been estimated at that price or lower. A dvd player can be picked up for as littel as €20, but purely because of the complex mechanical nature and rarity of a vcr, they usually set back upwards of €60 still.

You're right, I was thinking of my DVD player. Think my VCR (I still have one!) was about €60

gipi

GrumPy wrote: »

Really? that's the second time in this thread vcr's have been estimated at that price or lower. A dvd player can be picked up for as littel as €20, but purely because of the complex mechanical nature and rarity of a vcr, they usually set back upwards of €60 still.

I was one of those who alluded to prices of £25 (€32)....I did it in jest though, I know they're not quite that cheap, but by comparison to old prices, they are for nothing!

CiDeRmAn

I remember my first AV system, a Pioneer Dolby Pro-logic amp, back in 1992, a beautiful thing in black and chrome.
Had it all the way up to 1997, when a muppet with a glass of water spilled it into the amp, killing it.
My brother partially resurrected it with some fine soldering, but it was like Pet Cemetery, a shadow of its former self, so it was taken into the back field and shot.
It was great though, I had the Nicam VCR hooked up and had surround sound to my movies, and also my 3DO and Playstation had games in surround too.
But the amp was very expensive, around £600 or so, so over a grand in todays money.
Now you can pick up a 5.1 DVD system for less than €200 in Argos!

Ostrom

Anyone ever rent a megadrive from xtra vision? £10 a week, and the same for the playstation later, which came in a metal case with wipeout

Jesus Wept

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

Computers. I paid £300 for 8 megs of Ram,

That is incredible.

bullets

CD's and PC games.

I remember heading up to Virgin Megastore with my father
years ago buying my First CD for the family CD player and to Look
at PC computer games.

F19 Stealth Fighter which I had on a copied 5.25 floppy was somthing crazy
like 49.99 Pounds at the time
which was pretty shocking and not affordable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-19_Stealth_Fighter

My father bought a Clanned CD called Legend which was the soundtrack
to the Robin of Sherwood series with Michael Praed.

I bought "Opposites Attract" by Paula Abdul, as I could not see any other
CD's that I recognized at the time. I was totally unaware of the difference
between a CD single at the time and an CD album. When we got back to the
car and I looked at the track listings I only then noticed it was different re-mixs of the same song and not an album at all. My father returned the CD and got our money back as we could not believe we had paid so much
for a single and I ended up going home with it on vinyl.


~B

Run_to_da_hills

The-Rigger wrote: »

That is incredible.

That was around 1994 around the same time a single speed CD rom would have cost you in excess of £200 and was considered as an optional extra on most PC packages. The contents of a CD 750mb was probably about the size of the average HDD back then.

Single speed CD writers were just fresh on the market back then and were called WORM drives. Only larger companies could afford them and not your average PC head.

TheDriver

i was in the London Science Museum on Sun and there was a display with some old computer stuff along with other things and a guy with his child beside him was asking about what was a video, who were amstrad, why was the mobile phone so big. He quickly took the child away frustrated at his age showing!

Run_to_da_hills

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

That was around 1994 around the same time a single speed CD rom would have cost you in excess of £200 and was considered as an optional extra on most PC packages. The contents of a CD 750mb was probably about the size of the average HDD back then.

Single speed CD writers were just fresh on the market back then and were called WORM drives. Only larger companies could afford them and not your average PC head.

The company I work for started out by renting CD-R drives. Due to their high cost most people couldn't afford one so my boss rented them out for people to use. It then started from there.

Mackman

Our neighbours down the road had a TV that they needed 50p pieces for. They got an hour from 50p i think.They couldnt afford a new tv so this was some form of renting or something, not sure.
But every now and then, my mate used to come down to our door, banging away on it, when we answered he was always panting from running and asking "have ya got 50P????? Im in the middle of a movie!!!":pac:
That was around the late 80's, early 90's.

@ elfa:
I also remember renting the megadrive for 10pounds a week, my parents wouldnt buy me one cause they were too expensive

I bought my first mobile in 2000. a Nokia 3110 i think it was, it was the popular one, first without an arial. Anyway, it cost 100pounds Ready To Go, and texts costs about 25p each :eek:

silverharp

some relative prices are interesting. In the late 70's a packet of Tayto was around 5p a haircut was 50p (hazy on that one) and a new kids bike could be had for £50. Today its roughly €1, €10 and less then €200 , if the ratios had stayed constant a new bike "ought" to cost a grand. Not to mention that bikes are way better now.

pearliefan

This isn't really a thing per se, but flights used to be ridiculously expensive! It was mostly by car you'd go until Ryanair came along...and travelling places was always a massive thing! Still a big deal when you go on great holidays and all that but flying somewhere is almost as easy and cheap as driving now. Obviously Ryanair are being a stupid about it all at the moment, but it's still a whole lot cheaper than it used to be!

Run_to_da_hills

Karsini wrote: »

The company I work for started out by renting CD-R drives. Due to their high cost most people couldn't afford one so my boss rented them out for people to use. It then started from there.

I had one of the first Philips DVD+R drives that was commercially availible. Got it handy from a mate that worked in a large computer corporate,

it including a spool of DVD +RW. The disks alone retailed £25 each at the time. :eek: Single speed write once disks were about £14 each. 4.7 Gigs was a lot of storage back then.

About a year later Pioneer came out with the DRU500A +/- 2 speed drives that could do both formats.

BrookieD

I remember buying a External HD for my Amiga 500, 500STG was what i paid for 52mb storage. At the time it seemed that 52mb was so large how could you ever possibly fill that amount of space...

One photo from my camera would exceed that now..LOL

Also the intructions were very alarming in that if the install shield was not fitted the device on power up would blow the computer and HDD up and render both useless...AARRGGHHHHH

CiDeRmAn

I remember fitting an extra 16mb of RAM to my 200mhz MMX pc, forgetting to ground myself and nearly weeping when it failed to boot up, all I got was some beep beep noises.
I had to send it back and wait nearly a month for it to come home, all fixed.
That thing, a 200mhz MMX, 16mb of RAM, I think it had a 2gb HD and a 15" CRT monitor, cost me £2000, serious dough!
Then I got a Rendition graphics card, one of the first, and it cost me over 200.
Mad money, I wonder how much that is now, I bought that stuff back in 95/96

Cicero

I'm actually trying to think the original OP question out & it's not that easy once you leave aside electronic goods that have been mentioned aleady (stereos, early PCs, VCRs, SLR cameras etc) and flying, .....the only thing I can think of is Taxi's---- they were always classed as a luxury...
......I don't have prices from the 70s but late 80s prices would have been approx £1 for every 3/4 of a mile- definately not cheap taking into account income tax rates and salary rates at that time....(taxi drivers, feel free to correct me, that rate is just from memory but I wouldn't be far off)

Just wondering would anyone have hotel room rates in Ireland for the 70s or 80s?....again, there were very few hotels in Ireland back then in comparrison to now so would be interesting to see the prices charged...

L1011

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

The contents of a CD 750mb was probably about the size of the average HDD back then.

The first PC I had with a CD burner had a 540MB HDD originally. Which meant you couldn't actually burn a full disc... bought a 4GB one for something in the region of £400 :eek:

This was the era when CD-Rs cost £20 for a box of ten.


Lego used to be monstrously expensive, a medium-large sized set cost about £50 in 1995. Equivalent size now tops out at about €80 which is barely any more expensive to begin with, then take in to account a decade and a half of inflation!

mikemac

Karsini wrote: »

Back in 1998/1999 when Eircell launched analogue Ready to Go, the two price plans were 80/20/20 or 50/50/20. 80p a minute for a mobile call! :eek:

I remember that
That's figures are exactly correct. So expensive!

I loved their Ready to Go ads, here is the music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijh2Fqd1ZPY

Max_Damage

I remember buying a single blank CD-R disc in Easons around 1997/1998 for £10!

Only when I got home I realised I didn't have a CR-R drive! I was so young and naïve back then!

Cicero

New (chart) album prices in the mid 1980s were around £6.99 for a single album and £8.99- £9.99 for a double album....records (vinyl of course)...that's about EUR8.90 before inflation

...so you could say that new chart albums are a lot cheaper today than they were 25 years ago taking inflation/living standards/min wage etc into account..singles were around £1.50 - £1.75 at that time which was very expensive.

ANXIOUS

Came across this thread

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=5664&page=2

it's ridiculous how much people paid back then.

mikemac

ANXIOUS wrote: »

Came across this thread

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=5664&page=2

it's ridiculous how much people paid back then.

It's all relative, in 10 years people will laugh at us for spending hundreds on ipods and IPhone 4.

First PC I ever had had a 8GB hard drive and I swore I'd never fill more then a fraction of it. How could anyone need more then 8GB of storage I wondered.

A few years later, I'd fill it twenty times over with music, films, games and everything else.

Hector Mildew

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

Single speed CD writers were just fresh on the market back then and were called WORM drives. Only larger companies could afford them and not your average PC head.

The place I worked for in 1994 had a Kodak one, it cost more than £3000 and was bigger than a VCR. Blank discs were over £15 each.

It was actually a great investment and paid for itself quickly as there was huge demand for backups and producing CD audio masters. The downside (aside from cost) was single speed writes were painfully slow...

errlloyd

I am suprised by the amount of people mentioning hi-fi systems. Sure they have got cheaper, but not massively cheaper.

Can't remember it, but I am going to go for a guess that luxury foreign food was probably up there.

Kiwi fruit? Like you wouldn't have known it was expensive because you wouldn't consider it.

Run_to_da_hills

errlloyd wrote: »

I am suprised by the amount of people mentioning hi-fi systems. Sure they have got cheaper, but not massively cheaper.

They were mad expensive for what you got, today a larger size portable with bass futures would be the equivalent and better than many of those separate systems that were sold in the 70's & 80's.

My uncle spent 2K on a Bang & Oulfsen system in the 70;s, It wouldn't take much to match it today in sound quality, One must also remember that cassettes were the latest fad back then which gave lousy sound quality compared to anything digital.

L1011

errlloyd wrote: »

I am suprised by the amount of people mentioning hi-fi systems. Sure they have got cheaper, but not massively cheaper.

They've got slightly cheaper in pure cash terms alone. Then remember inflation!

K.O.Kiki

My dad was telling me how in the early 80s, because of the poor job market he'd go to Germany for summer work picking strawberries :pac:
To get there, he'd have to:

• Take the ferry to Holyhead
• Take another ferry to France
• Take a mixture of bus & train to Germany

Total travel time: 2-3 days

All because it was cheaper than a flight -- except he'd always have enough for a flight back :pac:

I remember when the Nintendo 64 launched, I really wanted one, but it was £250, games for £70, controllers for £45(ish)
I picked up two N64s with 10 games & 3 controllers for about €30 last year. Haven't even touched them tbh :rolleyes:

Dude111

Sadly alot of stuff THAT WAS QUITE EXPENSIVE AND NOW CHEAP is because NOW its made like crap thats why its so cheap!

Stuff used to be made WITH QUALITY PARTS,ETC.... Now they make them the cheapest/crappiest way..

Skerries

thats because we live in a more disposable lifestyle
Fashion and fads mean we have discarded the item before it has broken down and bought the latest version so no need for it to be made out of titanium

Run_to_da_hills

Dude111 wrote: »

Sadly alot of stuff THAT WAS QUITE EXPENSIVE AND NOW CHEAP is because NOW its made like crap thats why its so cheap!

Stuff used to be made WITH QUALITY PARTS,ETC.... Now they make them the cheapest/crappiest way..

Not necessarly, your average car in 1969 would be lucky to reach 120k miles or 10 years of age before the engine started to burn oil or the floor rotted out of it. How many 10 year old cars do you see about today? Certain products of today have certainly improved particularly solid state electronics.

filthymcnasty

Cicero wrote: »

.....the only thing I can think of is Taxi's---- they were always classed as a luxury...
......I don't have prices from the 70s but late 80s prices would have been approx £1 for every 3/4 of a mile- definately not cheap taking into account income tax rates and salary rates at that time....(taxi drivers, feel free to correct me, that rate is just from memory but I wouldn't be far off)

Taxis were certainly not cheap back then but i don't believe they are much cheaper now, but its definitely a lot easier to get one.

Dude111 wrote: »

Sadly alot of stuff THAT WAS QUITE EXPENSIVE AND NOW CHEAP is because NOW its made like crap thats why its so cheap!

Stuff used to be made WITH QUALITY PARTS,ETC.... Now they make them the cheapest/crappiest way..

Not necessarily, for example tv's- I remember as a kid in the 80's our tv going 'on the blink' a lot and the oul lad calling out a 'tv repair man'.
These days you rarely have a problem with a telly.

Run_to_da_hills

filthymcnasty wrote: »

Taxis were certainly not cheap back then but i don't believe they are much cheaper now, but its definitely a lot easier to get one.


Not necessarily, for example tv's- I remember as a kid in the 80's our tv going 'on the blink' a lot and the oul lad calling out a 'tv repair man'.
These days you rarely have a problem with a telly.

I can remember being sent in to Peats of Parnell St to get two replacement valves for my parents B&W TV.

With flat screen TV's these days once the warrenty runs out you more or less dump them of something goes wrong.