Hacker News Reader

Comment by GnarfGnarf | Hacker News Reader

Your reasoning is correct, but the results don't seem right. The horse is too high. Cow, axe & eggs too low. Possibly the data covers too wide a time and geographic span.

View on HN

He picked the highest price - if you look at the list, you'll see that a high grade war horse in a different source is listed as only £10. The note explains "Horse prices varied dramatically; for instance, they doubled between 1210 and 1310." So it sounds like an £80 war horse is either an exceptionally fine example - like comparing a Mercedes S-class to a Chevy Cruze - or the price was recorded during a period of 'horse inflation.'

A cow for $100 seems extremely cheap. Either that or cows where I live are much too expensive.

The war horse seems about right to me though. For those times, it would be similar to a luxury car or a bulldozer.

It's the chassis of the medieval tank.

Probably depends on the quality of the cow. Here you can buy one for 200€ or for 2000€.

Keep in mind, cows were way smaller before they were cross-bred with bison. The price reflects less pounds of meat on average.

Grocers here use eggs to drive foot traffic. I've paid $0.50 for a dozen in the last year and usually pay around $1.

Why is the horse too high? That's the one price we have no modern comparison for. Nobody is breeding warhorses anymore. A regular riding horse was a lot cheaper than this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com