Fun reading...

[jnyork]

Stumbled upon my copy of the 1939 edition of Stoeger's Gun Catalog and Handbook a few nights ago so have been thumbing through it. Stoegers' was the Midway type store of the day, 500 pages of guns, ammo, reloading, accessories, gunsmith tools, etc. Cameras too, along with real suits of medieval armor! Had to keep in mind that the minimum wage back then was 30 cents an hour, annual family income averaged $1300, hamburger and coffee was 15 cents and a new Chevrolet sedan was about $700. If you were making $100 a month you were in tall cotton.

Winchester Model 70 Super Grade was $88, Model 52 with sights was $60 as was a Model 71 in .348. Remington Model 37 and Model 81, both $90. Savage model 99's averaged around $55.00 Savage and Stevens .22's were less than $20. BSA Martini .22 target rifles at $150.00. German Mauser sporting rifles were dear, starting at $175.00

Found a couple of interesting articles I didn't know existed. Johnson Semi-Automatic Sporting Rifles, .30-06, 270 Winchester and .35 Whelen with interchangable barrels, 3 or 5 round magazines. No prices quoted , each rifle custom built to customer specifications. Wonder how many of these ever made it into the hands of purchasers.

Also, Luger .22 caliber conversion kit to convert your 9MM Luger to .22 rimfire. The kit $32.00, the Luger $100.00

Fascinating reading, gunsmithing tools and equipment could have been taken from this years Brownell's catalog!

If you have chance to grab an issue from this era, do so, they come up on ebay with some frequency

[gamekeeper]

I love reading those old catalogues, I've not found one that old but 50s and 60s are fun to read and in my opinion had better firearms listed than today's wonderful plastic and aluminium soul less stuff.

[Old Savage]

Compare prices to wages at the time. Probably find out not much has changed.

[Ray Newman]

Old Savage is onto it!

Looking back, prices always seem to be really cheap or economical. That is because we forget how little we or or our parents/grandparents were making Back In The Day.