Historical and adjusted-for-inflation prices of calculators

[Siegfried]

Thanks for this very interesting compilation. It is somehow sobering to see that buying machines in bulk in the 1970s/80s to resell them now would not have been a great business idea and that "worth as much as new" doesn't mean much without catering for cruel inflation.

Actual prices are usually way lower than historical prices adjusted for inflation. Even a 19C for 1K is just a bit more than 50% of its adjusted historical price.

I found it interesting that the 41CX cost less adjusted for inflation than the 41C at its introduction and that both were quite a bit cheaper than common home computers at the time. (While my impression is that the 41 series attracted a different kind of clientele than early home computers the overlap between programmable calculator and early home computer users/usage would be an interesting topic in itself.)

It will be interesting to see whether prices continue to increase to somewhere amounting to an ROI for contemporary buyers or flatten or even drop once the last of the "RPN generation" have died or at least become too old to remember how to use them ;-)