[PW] A dime a dozen

[John Henderson]

On a table from a Census Bureau document listing historical commodity  
prices for the years 1890-1970, the average retail price of a dozen  
eggs appears to have been very stable from 1890 to 1901 at around 20  
cents. It leaped to 30 cents by the end of the next decade, and  
skyrocketed to 68 cents in 1920. During the depression the price fell  
back into the thirties.

I will let the rest of you speculate whether this might mean that  
eggs were not the commodity first used for comparison, since the  
price even as early as 1890 was twice a dime a dozen, or that the  
expression, even as yet undocumented, goes back much earlier than  
1890 when the price might have a dime a dozen

However, my own speculation is based on the fact that even during the  
time periods when the average price of eggs ranged from 30 cents or  
more, in the spring eggs are most plentiful, and suppliers need to  
unload them in a hurry (especially in a non-refrigerator era).  
Therefore, at certain times, eggs might easily have looked down upon  
as only worth a dime a dozen.

John Henderson
Ithaca College Library
[who curretnly sells his free-range, ungraded, nest-fresh hens' eggs  
in a rainbow assortment of colors and sizes for $2.50 a dozen]