A Complete Professional Photography Kit for $15.35… Back in the Year 1900
Want to buy all the camera equipment you need to start a photography business for just $15.35? All you’ll need is… a time machine! Reddit user sneeden found this Sears Roebuck and Co. consumer guide for the fall of 1900. Two of the pages inside the catalog are for view camera kits that can help anyone “start in a pleasant and good paying business.”
Obviously $15.35 wasn’t chump change to people back in 1900, but it wasn’t an extravagant amount either: The Inflation Calculator tells us that it would be the equivalent of about $417 in 2012 money. That’s how much high-end compact cameras cost these days.
Here’s a closer look at the two view camera pages (a full-res scan can be found here):
Just to give you an idea of what the world was like back then, here’s what the cover looked like:
Ladies could buy the latest jackets for around $5:
And if you need a new ride, there’s a section devoted to carriages:
Want to see more? You can browse through many pages of this 1900 catalog in this online gallery.
Image credit: Photographs by sneeden and used with permission
