Prices

Sometimes a family history researcher digs up information about the money amount that an ancestor spent, or earned, or owned etc. And then it becomes interesting how great was the money, what one could buy for this money, what was the real value of this money.

Unfortunately, it is not that easy to characterize the prices because the goods and services one spent the money for were quite different in various time periods. Please try to determine what you would be ready to pay for a bunch of goose pens for writing, or for wig powder, or for a good horse saddle, or for a working horse 6 or 12 years old.

My best idea was to characterize the price level at the beginning of the 19^th century by the prices of serfs. No doubt, these prices were driven by demand and offer as usual, but I thought they could reflect the spending for feeding up a serf.

Unfortunately, in reality these prices depended seriously on the gender, age, acquired professional skills etc. of the item. It was possible to buy a serf for 30 silver Roubles (a young maid for 10 and a child for 4 Roubles), but for a skilled artisan some 100 or even 200 silver Roubles were necessary. Thus this approach gives rather wide range for the amount of money needed for existence, however provides some understanding of the real value of the money, doesn't it?

For the information about silver Roubles and Roubles in assignations you may connect to another Page.