A handful of period documents from the personal collection.

An 1861 brochure from Harvey Waters:





Emerson & Stevens 1935 catalog materials:





1952 Sta-Tite Snath ad from Hardware Age industry publication:



From the North Wayne Tool Co. Catalog No.117 (1951):











1893 David Wadsworth & Son price list:











From a rare Derby, Ball, & Edwards catalog:

12$ in 1893 I wonder what that would be worth now

David Livingston wrote:12$ in 1893 I wonder what that would be worth now

It depends on what method of calculating relative worth you use.

Roughly $326 of today's dollars if using the "real value" method (best used for commodity goods like a bundle of bread, milk, eggs, etc) but $1620 if using the unskilled laborer wage method or $2720 if using the production worker wage method. I'm inclined to believe that the production worker wage method is the most accurate in this case, which would put their top-shelf blades at a dealer cost of $226.66 of today's dollars.

This online calculator utility is a handy resource when looking at historical prices, as it breaks down a bunch of different method calculations with explanations of what indexes were used in the calculation.