Historical Pricing Of Cams

Had a thought this morning about where the pricing of cams was going.  With Ultralights starting to break into the 100s whats next?

Does anyone have historical pricing on cams 90s to now? Would be interesting to see an evolution chart verses a cost breakdown.

WadeM wrote:

Had a thought this morning about where the pricing of cams was going.  With Ultralights starting to break into the 100s whats next?

Does anyone have historical pricing on cams 90s to now? Would be interesting to see an evolution chart verses a cost breakdown.

I bought my first 3 cams - #1-#3 - from Ray Jardine in 1978 for ~$30 each. At the time that was pretty expensive, considering that you could buy a new car for $3500. These were basically the first and only cams available (there were a few earlier attempts that went nowhere).

By the 90's, Wild Country Friends were ~$45+

I remember forged friends going for 45 to 50 in the early 90's. Now take into consideration inflation, and that forged friends went down to 35 to 40 by the time they were discontinued around '98 or '99, and I think that relative prices of cams may have have actually decreased in price. As for camalots, I haven't noticed much of a  price difference at all in the close to 30 years that they have been on the market. 

Hobo Greg wrote:

I feel like where cams are now is perfectly fine. They could stop making new designs today, but people won't hit the limits of what's possible for many years to come. I hope, falsely I'm afraid, that our industry is not on the path towards over consumerism the way backpacking has.

oh it definitely is on the way to consumerism but what can you do. lots of people with cash to burn, a company would be stupid to not make new gimmicks for them to throw that money at.

you're right though, backpacking is pretty bad hahaha.

Marc801 C wrote:

I bought my first 3 cams - #1-#3 - from Ray Jardine in 1978 for ~$30 each. At the time that was pretty expensive, considering that you could buy a new car for $3500. These were basically the first and only cams available (there were a few earlier attempts that went nowhere).

By the 90's, Wild Country Friends were ~$45+

Marc, I remember the prices for Friends in 1978 being about $21-23. Pretty sure I still have a "Jardine Enterprises" brochure at home somewhere. You'd send a postcard to Ray and he'd cut out your return address and Scotch tape it to his brochure and mail it.

Keep in mind that it just may be the glut of product on the market that is responsible for the relative affordability of pro. When your only options were Wild Country, HB, BD, and Wired Bliss, companies could pretty much just name their prices.  

Also keep in mind that in 1980, $35 would be the equivalent of $100 in today's dollars. 

Hobo Greg wrote:

I feel like where cams are now is perfectly fine. They could stop making new designs today, but people won't hit the limits of what's possible for many years to come. 

Are you also willing to say the same thing rolling back 10-15 years?

There haven't been any price increases since I've been climbing (8ish years) so that's what got me so interested in this topic. It just seemed like BD have change it up? Or maybe they did that with the ULs. 

My personal opinion is that the only real competitors to BD right now is Wild County.  Same sizes, thumb loop (sorry DMM). I think the ergonomics of the new WC are better.

Interested to see what happens in the next 5 years

Cams are probably about the same price now as they once were probably a little less

I bought 3 new wild country friends for £120 that's comes out to around $50 a piece compare a cam in 1978 it costs you $112 in todays money BUT these items are not equivalent to get a real feel for it what we need to do is look at the new cutting edge tech bring in the UL c4 at retail a size 3 costs $108 that is almost exactly the same as the original friends.

So to the OP cutting edge tech has cost about the same through out the last 40 years the reason it looks like it's gone up is simply because we haven't had cutting edge tech for a while so whether it's historical pricing, added competition or wider scale manufacturing cams have come down in price over the last 30 years and it's the lack of innovation that has set your perception of what a cam should cost. 

I don't know about cams specifically, but Relative to how much other things have gone up, I feel most climbing gear is actually less expensive today than it was 50 years ago. My first new car, a 1969 Ford Mustang cost $2800 while today's is about 10x that, $28,000 (?).  A chromoly piton was $1.25, today about $7.  A basic down jacket, about $35; -- today about $150 - $250. (Yes, you can get more expensive ones)  The first Stopper nuts were about $1 each (but you did have to put your own 5 to 8 mm cord in). Ropes, RELATIVE-LY SPEAKING have come down significantly; my first 40meter, 11mm "Perlon" rope was in the neighborhood of $50 or $60.  Today you get a much better, 60 or 70m rope for way less than 10x that price. 

Cams were "late to the market" but even given the lower inflation of the 1990's vs the 1973-1985 era, I think they are no more today RELATIVE to what they were in the early 80's.   

Within the climbing market there's a lot more competition amoung manufacturers today, and whenever something (like a down jacket) crosses over into the hiking & backpacking realm there's even more competition.  

For comparison try out an inflation calculator. It looks like cam prices translated back are actually lower today. A $65 cam today would be $21.68 in 1980. 

https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

IIRC in the early to mid 90's most of the sizes of camalots were $59.95 and stayed around that level for a really long time.  overall, i think climbing hardware (except ropes, like john wilder noted) have stayed very flat, particularly when you compare them to  beer prices (which i find to be the true benchmark of inflation).

wivanoff wrote:

Marc, I remember the prices for Friends in 1978 being about $21-23. Pretty sure I still have a "Jardine Enterprises" brochure at home somewhere. You'd send a postcard to Ray and he'd cut out your return address and Scotch tape it to his brochure and mail it.

I think you're right now that I've hadd time to stir up some memories. I sorta remember the set of 3 costing $75.

WadeM wrote:

My personal opinion is that the only real competitors to BD right now is Wild County.  Same sizes, thumb loop (sorry DMM). I think the ergonomics of the new WC are better.

Interested to see what happens in the next 5 years

Metolius makes some damn nice cams. Their new ultralight master cams are just as good or better than ultralight Camalots, but at a much cheaper price. If only they would expand the range to larger sizes instead of using the old u-stem powercam design, they would be directly competing with BD

I lived in Yosemite Valley in 1978 when Ray started selling his cams to climbers.  There were three sizes #1, #2 and #3.  Ray was selling them for $17/ea.  We all thought that was an outrageous price to pay for climbing protection.

Idaho-Ian wrote:

Metolius makes some damn nice cams. Their new ultralight master cams are just as good or better than ultralight Camalots, but at a much cheaper price. If only they would expand the range to larger sizes instead of using the old u-stem powercam design, they would be directly competing with BD

Yep, but exactly what you said about bigger sizes. Thats why I left them off the list. Master cams like to get stuck from my experience

Bruce Hildenbrand wrote:

I lived in Yosemite Valley in 1978 when Ray started selling his cams to climbers.  There were three sizes #1, #2 and #3.  Ray was selling them for $17/ea.  We all thought that was an outrageous price to pay for climbing protection.

It was about $40 for an OZ of good weed then, no? 

Remember, that unlike shirts and what not, cams aren't something that customers buy often. You get once and don't buy more or replace for many years. A biz can't stay alive with only one-off customers. I'm sure that is built into the pricing somehow.