I made a price list for games set in the 1890s. EDIT: And the 1920s.

[deuxhero]

Preface that got a little too long

I love Ravenloft's spinoff Masque of the Red Death as a setting. Unfortunately, all four and a half of its incarnations (original, RPGA's 3E update, RPGA's 3.5 update, White Wolf, and DM's Guild) have had a a pretty lackluster equipment list. A lot of the prices were essentially random with no relation to their historical price, while others still seemed to be D&D items run through a crude price conversion estimate. It also had some rather bizarre selections, including a non-portable optical illusion device that has absolutely no use to a player characters, and pricing each individual item of clothing (despite its parent system wisely just pricing "outfits" of different properties and letting players describe their character). It also has a problem with items having no description despite non-obvious function (How anyone in 1994 was supposed to know what a "magic lantern" was is beyond me) or descriptions that are totally wrong (it claims small concealable firearms are hard to obtain without criminal contacts, despite mail order catalogs of the day having literal pages dedicated to it, or that dynamite is hard to obtain, despite being an agricultural tool in the era, or that melee weapons and armor are valued antiques despite the Bannerman catalog existing). One edition does suggest checking prices in period catalogs (Poorly. It suggests looking in libraries yet RPGA demands all used books be brought to the table.) so since I actually like reading those things, I decided I'd make my own price list for the setting. Between Archive.org and Google Books I managed to wrangle enough sources to make a largely comprehensive list (even if I had to dig into a few early 1900s sources to price stuff from the later part of the decade). Some things I'm fairly surprised I could find (a medical trade journal with a rather extensive list of drugs for order was a huge one I did not expect to find).

Here is the resulting list, with sources. While I've given descriptions to the best of my historical knowledge (corrections welcome), the only mechanics are grouping pistol rounds into two categories as the Masque of the Red Death did (though I grouped them based on actual momentum rather than purely off bullet diameter and gave them more reasonable names) because trying to sort dozens of highly obsolete, no longer produced, firearms cartridges beyond that is a terrible idea. The result is that the list should be valid for any game set in the 1890s, including Cthulhu by Gaslight ect.

https://ghostbin.com/paste/CKRQy
edit: Updated version with prices for horses and horse gear plus some other small changes (grammar, notes) https://ghostbin.com/paste/g85D8
edit: Found Dynamite and a way of loosely determining travel/meal costs. Should be reasonably complete now. https://ghostbin.com/paste/OvAi4
Edit: Some new stuff.
https://ghostbin.com/paste/ZDL5C
Edit:
1920s guide added
https://ghostbin.com/paste/bBfDu Updated with two new sources: https://ghostbin.com/paste/avOX0
Edit:
Various updates with new items etc. One big thing is that I redid the calculations for silver per silver bullet (turns out the calculator I used the first time truncated numbers really bad, which is why some had really yields), new one should be accurate if it's correct to determine the calculation of determining cubic area for a weight of lead, then determining the weight of that cubic area of silver.
1890s: https://ghostbin.com/paste/JqJFn
1920s: https://ghostbin.com/paste/sZreF


I've got almost everything I'd like to have included, with the main omissions I made due to lack of data being horses (even checking local papers with prices from local businesses found nothing), and more medical equipment (as a non-medical professional I'm unable to price out a reasonable set of tools for a traveling physician and only know a handful of useful medicines that existed and are worth including). Please tell me if there's any items I should include but haven't. I've still got all my sources saved so I can easily look for them.

 

[Whimper]

Here's some horse and mules, from america since I assume that that is what your prices reflect: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31175006938032&view=1up&seq=661

 

[deuxhero]

Perfect. Thanks. With those prices I'll actually go and put together horse gear (saddle, reins, spurs, saddle bags, bit+briddle, and carriages. Anything else?) since I have an actual horse price to put in front of it.

I should have mentioned it explicitly, but almost all prices are indeed from the US. I did look through some Canadian catalogs, but aside from new rain ponchos and the Model 1897 I found American sources for all items I included. The other price that's not 100% American is for bolt action rifles earlier in the century, which is from an American catalog but citing the price (and its USD conversion) that the Boers paid for theirs.

 

[deuxhero]

And now I've made a guide for the 1920s. Don't expect any guides for decades after this since that stuff isn't yet in the public domain (thanks to Disney). I doubt I can go back further than 1890 since the first mail order catalogs only showed up sometime around 1870 and aren't nearly as exhaustive (or well preserved). I'm not really sure there's interest in anything between and trying to price anything consistently during a total war environment (even for the US significant parts of the economy moved to helping those stupid Europeans kill eachother, not to mention shortages of imported stuff and cutting off Canadian catalogs) rules out the 1910s (at least mid-1914 on).

https://ghostbin.com/paste/bBfDu

One thing of note is that most items have weights now (most of them shipping weights only, but way better than nothing). I presume this wasn't the case in the 1890s material because costs for freight shipping only varied in increments of 100 pounds so only exceptionally and/or deceptively heavy items really needed it. As before, feel free to tell me items I should have included but didn't mention.

 

[Eldagusto]

Very interesting and useful for settings beyond the mentioned games.

 

[deuxhero]

useful for settings beyond the mentioned games.

Can you elaborate on that?

I've found a couple new sources for 1920s, an earlier milsurp catalog and a (very reduced, several hundred pages missing) reprint of the 1927 Sears catalog. Update in OP.

 

[JamesDixon]

Here's a source for prices and wages from 1890-1899.

https://libraryguides.missouri.edu/pricesandwages/1890-1899

The guides do go back to the 1600s and up to present day.

 

[deuxhero]

One such list for wages of that is already mentioned at the bottom of the document 1890s document. It's just not incorporated into the document itself because there's no way to reduce the information.

 

[JamesDixon]

One such list for wages of that is already mentioned at the bottom of the document 1890s document. It's just not incorporated into the document itself because there's no way to reduce the information.

I didn't look at your list. I just figured I give you a source I use for historical reference. How you use it is up to you.