How does one find historic prices for goods?

Question

I need to find out the typical price of two things - namely bottled water (ie: a plastic individual-size bottle of still drinking water), and, gas-station type road maps - around 1995, in the USA.

(I was very much alive then, but I simply can't recall clearly.)

I assumed I could just instantly search "historic prices year by year, for item X" but I am surprised to find that no such resource exists.

There's plenty of info on inflation as such, and price series for a few marker items (like "butter"), but, again, I was surprised there just does not seem to be, I could not find anyway, such data on this-or-that consumer item.

The bottled water fad had kicked in by then. (Example, Dasani, coke's bottled tap water, was released 1999; I thought I would be able to easily find the retail price of that on launch, but I couldn't even find that.)

In re road maps - the type which in the old days, you bought in a gas station en route - bizarrely I have a large collection of old ones myself, including many USA ones, but couldn't find one with a price; nor could I find an online pic of one, from the year, showing the price.

With bottled water it's further tricky in that, just as today, the supermarket price versus convenience store price versus gas station price is wildly different.

FTR I'm interested in the price of "cheap" bottled water, not Perrier or such.

(I really couldn't even find the price of a - say - "cheap can of Coke" in 1995, which would likely be similarly priced to a bottled water; and again I literally just can't recall how much a "cheap can of Coke" was in the 90s!)

Someone may know the info source I can't find, or indeed, someone with a plain good memory may have the facts!

Again, I was shocked you can't just instantly look up a list "price of X, every year 1970 to present" sort of thing - surprising.

(*) Nowadays paper road maps, I see, are about 10 bucks (wtf!) if bought cheaply online, probably a fair bit more at gas stations. I'd say bottle of Aquafina or such is 3-4 bucks ? at a gas station (but only 1.00 - 1.50 at a supermarket).

Examples of a "gas station -type map", aka a folding, single-sheet paper map in the very typical size. (I don't know a better nomenclature than "gas station -type map".

Answer 1

Historic newspapers, the Internet Archive, and librarians are your friends. The following are some (mostly) U.S.-centric sources:

• Internet Archive, use the second search box, not the Wayback Machine. If you know the title, use "Search metadata"; if you're searching for text within a newspaper or book, use "Search text contents."
• Library of Congress Chronicling America
• The Ancestor Hunt list of newspaper collections
• Paid subscription sites (NewsBank, Genealogy Bank, Newspapers dot com)
• Your local library website > A-Z Databases, search for "Newspaper" or the name of your local newspaper
• Most historical materials are not digitized, so you may have to enlist the help of a librarian.
  • Visit the library in person.
  • An alternative is to use Interlibrary Loan (ILL) to have a remote librarian obtain the thing you're looking for and send it to your local library. You can even get them to scan a page of a physical newspaper that hasn't previously been scanned. Some libraries may charge a small fee for this service.

I haven't found info on the maps. When I was a child, maps were free at the gas station, but somewhere along the line, gas stations started charging for them, and I don't remember when that shift happened.

I used my library's A-Z Databases to consult the archives for my local newspaper, where I found store-brand bottled water from $0.69 to $0.79 for a ~3/4 liter bottle, and $6.99 for a case of 20-ounce bottles, quantity unstated but possibly 12 bottles.

Here are a couple of ads from 1995 newspapers in Houston, Texas, in the summer months. Randalls is a local grocery chain, and Eckerd was a Florida-based drugstore chain that was acquired by CVS.

Answer 2

For the road maps, if I were you I'd see if my local library has any. They should have a block on them (the front fold for a fold-out, the back page for a road atlas) that has information like copyright date, and suggested retail price.

As Shover mentioned, these tended to be available in gas stations, particularly those servicing major highways and interstates. Personally I preferred using the Road Atlases, which would have a page per US state, and were also sold in most bookstores and chain grocery stores. Not only were they much easier to put away, but they could be used for pretty much any trip I'd ever take, and it was nearly impossible to mess up my navigation so badly that I ended up off the map.

Also, back before electronic navigation many people in the US who were apt to take road trips would join AAA. This provided travelers with both roadside assistance if they suffered a breakdown in a strange area, and with specialized trip maps showing the roads they need to take for their particular trip in a binder, called TripTik's, upon request. Apparently, they now provide some similar service online. This service was (at least when last I saw it used in the 1980's) free to paying members.

Answer 3

Map prices will vary quite a bit based on the size, complexity, and quality of the map you're looking for. For example, a search on archive.org for "1995 map cleveland" turned up scans of this detailed map of Cleveland with "$12.95" on the cover. That was fairly standard price for a 100+ page, laminated, book-bound map with that level of detail. Your standard impossible-to-re-fold flimsy paper map is a bit harder to find since their size makes them difficult to scan. I found this city map of Newark from 2009 that was labeled "$4.99". That's about $3.50 in 1995 dollars, which seems about right to my memory for a map that size. Printing costs dominate the cost for these cheaper maps, so it's all a factor of overall size, paper quality, and number of ink colors.

Most people didn't actually pay for maps, though (at least in my experience). Racks full of brochures and free maps were common sights in gas stations, hotel lobbies, and large rest stops. Chambers of commerce and other civic groups would publish city maps with local landmarks and tourist attractions marked on them. The state department of transportation would distribute free maps of the state's highway system, like this 1990 map of Montana. Gas stations would sometimes publish their own maps that had store locations marked on them. You could even send off for free travel guides from a state's transportation or tourism department. These were large atlases with high-level as well as detailed regional maps (example for Texas from 1996). There was a decent chance that a gas station on a highway would even have fairly nice maps posted on the wall inside the store for travelers to reference.

As far as bottled water goes, the price depends on how you buy it. Standard vending machine prices where I lived (per my memory, it's hard to find a source) were 50 cents for a 12oz can and 75 cents for a 20oz bottle. Buying from the cooler in a gas station was roughly the same price, and buying a multi-pack from a grocery store was (per unit) a bit less than half of the vending machine price. Around the same price ratios as today.

Answer 4

A quick search of eBay finds an actual 1995 AAA map of Michigan marked "Retail Value 4.00", so I would expect a price of around $3.95 from a gas station.

An almost equally quick search finds a mid-1996 NY Times article (behind a paywall) on bottled water that claims:

One-and-a-half-liter bottles range in price from $1.39 to more than $2.

Then, as now, I would expect the price of bottled water at a gas station to be towards the higher end. Supermarkets towards the lower end, and of course, there is hardly a lower limit to what a supermarket might put a product like that on loss-leader sale for.