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Comment by pengaru | Hacker News Reader

In 2021 this IKEA gateleg table [0] cost $199 [1].

In early 2022 it was $229 according to my records, but never in stock at any IKEAs near me. Presumably because of all the crazy supply chain/lumber problems, the IKEA shelves were largely empty.

By the time it managed to get back in stock, the price was $259 [2].

Today it's $279 [0], a 40% increase over its 2021 price. I don't even know how low it was before 2020/pre-pandemic, as far back as archive.org goes it's $199.

[0] https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/norden-gateleg-table-birch-9042...

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210227021124/https://www.ikea....

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20220422144639/https://www.ikea....

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"don't worry you're just imagining it, the market will correct itself"

We're now into the early 1920's stage of potentially a huge depression which will probably end (at best) in a cold war with China/Global-East. At worst more and more proxy conflicts as superpowers turn back to expansionism rather than fixing the fact that the bubble around an exponential growth based economy will eventually burst.

Another furniture anecdote:

In late 2020, we purchased our couch for $400. By early 2021 the price had risen to ~$500, and it was completely out of stock. Now the price is $800 and it's regularly out of stock for months at a time.

https://www.structube.com/en_ca/falcon-3seater-sofa-46-19-68

Ha, I got that table, we had to stalk Ikea's store every day to catch it in stock and drive there immediately.

This is a tangential anecdote for inflation though, it's supply and demand here. They have a limited number so they are going to charge as much as they can for the limited stock they have.

> Ha, I got that table, we had to stalk Ikea's store every day to catch it in stock and drive there immediately.

When was that?

> This is a tangential anecdote for inflation though, it's supply and demand here. They have a limited number so they are going to charge as much as they can for the limited stock they have.

It was consistently in-stock at the Covina, CA IKEA around when the price jumped to $259. At least it seemed to be whenever I checked, but once it jumped to $279 I resigned to just pick up a used one eventually instead when I get back to CA.

Are you saying IKEA is still struggling to get stuff in stock today? I was under the impression that's largely behind us now.

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