Super O Bob posted:romiller49 posted:Could it be made today at the same quality of the past and still be affordable?
I wondered that myself... i would expect the copper in the original track would be very expensive today. The copper quality i think was really good.
The fact the copper in the original track would be very expensive is an interesting point. It would also be interesting to quantify the inflation in the price of copper, say since 1960. Using an inflation calculator online, $1.00 of Super "O" track in 1960 would cost $8.53 today. But, that obviously calculates the general inflation rate. The inflation rate for copper would be the important calculation for this particular material. (Of course, if the product was made in Asia the calculation would be different - and might be almost incalculable with any precision for the future in the present environment depending on the sourcing.)
This should be a graph of copper prices in the United States since 1960 that I located online:
https://www.macrotrends.net/14...istorical-chart-data
Assuming I'm reading the graph correctly, the price of copper in early 1960 was about .30 per pound. "The current price of copper as of October 25, 2018 is $2.75 per pound", according to that website. Interestingly it looks like the price of copper decreased during 1960. [Note the drastic drop in the price of copper since 2011. That level of volatility might be concerning all by itself.]
In conclusion, this somewhat less than rigorous attempt at quantification indicates that copper prices are only slightly greater than the general rate of inflation from roughly 1960 until yesterday.
But the "affordability", question is a very relevant fact. Built to Order?
