Value of $100 in 1925, adjusted to 1986

What happened to prices between 1925 and 1986

Between 1925 and 1986, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.5 to 109.6. Cumulatively, prices increased 526.3%, which works out to an average of 3.05% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1925 bought what $0.16 buys in 1986.

Consumer prices rose 2.3% in 1925, the CPI’s largest single-year increase since the deflationary swings of the early 1920s, though still mild next to the double-digit inflation of the World War I years. The country’s cultural fault lines were on full display that summer in Dayton, Tennessee, where high school teacher John Scopes was tried July 10-21 for violating a state law against teaching evolution, a case that drew national press coverage and pitted prosecutor William Jennings Bryan against defense attorney Clarence Darrow. Real estate speculation, meanwhile, peaked in Florida, where buyers flipped undeveloped land in the Miami area on thin down payments, driving prices far above what the land itself could support; the bubble would collapse the following year. Detroit reshuffled that June too: Walter Chrysler reorganized the struggling Maxwell Motor Company into Chrysler Corporation, the start of what would become one of the American auto industry’s “Big Three.” First-class postage held at 2 cents for the sixth straight year.

More about inflation in 1925 →