There was an ad in the SD paper this AM for $395.95 Earl Scheib paint jobs with an extra $15 for environmental fees. Two of my high school rides had paint jobs from the "Earl" at $19.95 and $29.95 in the fifties. Great base coat for rattle can flames and scallops. Walked past the Moon booth at the GNRS and noted a special on "flipper" white walls at $15 a pop. Pep Boys used to blow these out at 99 cents a piece once or twice a month. At that price, you could afford to tear 'em up on high curbs or replace them when they turned pee yellow in a couple of months
I remember when gas was $0.26 per gallon and it spiked that year to $0.35 per gallon and everybody was really pissed off! That was in the late 60's. Hell I remember when gas was $1.35 per gallon 2 years ago!!! I'm getting old but my mine is sharp as a trap. Did you notice that.LOL
29.95 in 1950 works out to $257.00 in today's money. Add all the extra environmental **** that a shop has to get around...the $30k fire supression system installed in the booth... and it all evens out. it's the same deal, same cheap paint job.
denis, Earl Scheib's ads were "I'll paint any car for $29.95 and $10.00 of free body work." There were ads for Appleton's at $29.95 for a set in the 50's. We could cruise all over on the weekend for $0.50 of gas. I wanna go back................................ CRUISER
Imagine $10.00 worth of bodywork now...would that cover plugging in the grinder, even? ES prices covered a limited range of colors, at 29.95...mud, off-mud, light mud, etc. Moving up to colors with names cost a bit extra, and then there was a kind of '63 Impala metallic blue available in the early sixties that was as close as you could get to a custom look for dirt cheap...it was very popular for poorly financed rods and customs. My Father got our '58 Ford (rusted, like all of them) wagon painted by ES maybe about 1962. The body work (don't remember cost) involved a dollop of bondo into the standard issue Ford rusted headlight area, and a p*** with a very co**** grinder leaving sanding marks clearly visible through the heavy enamel. Masking was pretty sloppy, and some of the paint could be lifted and rolled up by fingernail months later. Whatever it cost, it was a job suitable only for a car to be quickly sold in bad light. I think rodders must have done their own masking on the better jobs i saw.
Yeah, and I couldn't afford any more of it then than I can now. I remember saving up 6 months to buy a set of "slotted mags" for my Chevelle at $45 each in 1968. Remember the guys who bought brand new muscle cars and would let you take them for a ride if you put gas in them because they couldn't afford to make the payments and put gas in too??
I am holding in my hand the receipt dated 10/4/1963 for the complete balanced Crankshaft Co. 3 3/8 x 4 1/8 flathead stroker kit with Jahns 3 ring pistons, bearings, wrist pins, connecting rods and crank I bought new from Almquist engineering Co. in ****ord, PA. for $249.40. I was making $1.15 an hour.
"Somebody please explain to me the point here................." The point here is simply that a lot of "tradition" is promoted by people who don't have a clue! We were considered "****s" for running flipper white walls, even at 99 cents a copy, in the fifties.
I paid something like 22 pounds, English money for one 13x6 Superior chrome slot wheel in 1977, I could only afford two, it was a ****load of money for a high school student working in a shoe shop on weekends. Everything is relative.
I remember Earl Scheib was $69 in the '70s. I remember people getting their cars painted there and they'd paint right over the chrome emblems, part of the windshield trim, part of the grill, and part of your tires for no extra charge. I think they just scuffed your paint and painted over whatever you had with no primer even. If someone had a ****py paint job, it was always referred to as an "Earl Scheib job" no matter who painted it.
Hahahahahahaha...you ain't near as old as you think you are...I can remember when gas was 19.9 cents a gallon...and there were "gas wars" once a month...gas used to drop as low as 10 cents a gallon...and we used to buy 50 cents worth and cruise all nite on that... and oil was 10 cents a quart...what can you buy for a dime these days...??? R-
Yeah, God bless the old days.---I remember them well. I started work in an engineering office in 1965---$53 a week for a 40 hour week. Gas was $.40 a gallon, smokes were $.35 a pack. It cost $15 a week for room and board as long as you went home on the weekends. If you didn't go home, it cost $21 a week.
I was just telling someone I paid .10 a QT. for oil, (it was reclaimed oil). Most of the time my cars were so ragged I'd check the gas and fill the oil!!! A bucks worth of gas was something I had a hard time buying at times, allot of the time it would be a quarters worth. I had a job driving a friends aunt to and from work every day for $10 bucks a week. I did see gas for .10 a gallon down in Texas back in 1964. What does that figure out to in todays money? Just Kidding!
I worked for a few months at Earl Scheib in San Gabriel, SoCal in 1970. The paint jobs were $29.95..."any car, any color". My pay was $1.91 an hour. After taxes I made about $64 a week. One Valentines Day (Feb. 14) we had a "special"...,yup, you guessed it...any car any color...$14.95. My Grandma had her Comet painted beige (!). My job was to paint the tires with "tire black" because we were running so many cars through this day that nobody masked off the tires. Yellow car=yellow tires.
While in High School I worked at a Vicker's station in KCMO for $1.60 an hour. Got my first check after two weeks... $104.. What was I going to do with all that money? Bought a 4-8 track player and two speakers out of a Cadillac for $65. Was in the big leagues then; at least for sound. Me and my girl, now my wife, put a lace paintjob on my 62 Chrysler for about $5 in lace and two or three cans of paint. Came out pretty good for 1970's stylin. VonDad
i went to my local paint shop to pick up some materials for my next paint job and i had a heart attack at what the pricing was, and i get a high volume shop discount!!!! $23.00 a gallon for lacquer thinner and that was the cheapest they had. just the materials for my paint job was over $800 alone and he is throwing the pearl in for free. when i shot my 51 six years ago i spent $365 for everything and it was all top shelf stuff and i still had a gallon of clear left over. inflation is a *****!!!!!
Years ago I was so handsome that song birds would appear and serenade me when ever I walked outside. Each morning my pecker would awaken me by t******* me on my chest. The world was beating a path to my door to buy my better mousetrap. Now I stay inside the darkened house all day with the shades drawn. I don't answer the door or the phone. I wait until after dark to retrieve the mail. I warm myself in the phosphor glow from this computer. I wear tissue boxes for shoes. I'm germ phobic. I'm a shell of the man I used to be, and why? Because I did NOT have ANY car painted for $19.95. I could have had ANY car painted. Perhaps a Ferrari or Maserati but I would have been happy with a Lamborghini. Take heed my friends! Let this be a lesson to you. In other news I found the original bill of sale for my father's brand spanking new 1949 Ford convertible. It came to something like $1995 total. He paid cash but he had saved his money though out the war. There wasn't much else to spend it on anyway. Also he ordered it in 1945, as soon as they began to take civilian orders. He had to wait until December 1948! He had ordered a business coupe but the only thing they had available was the ragtop. Take it or leave it. He took it.
Worked for Earl in early 70's prices were 39.95 and 49.95 for the costly reds and metillacs yea right. was highest paid employee in shop at 5.00 per hr. i was the painter.any one else out there who worked for Schieb? we used a device like you use to roll along a map to show miles but this red in dollars this is how they did body work estimates the patented Earl Scheib estometer. wish i still had one save a lot of time with the crash book.
i think i got one of there paint gobs for $99.95 around 1979 i actually took a rolling body with no trim on a set of ****ty wheels and got a pretty decent paint job out of it ..
had a 55 chevy done back in the 29.95 days. Took the car in with all the trim removed, and everything else masked up. Even had it in primer. Made a deal and had them do it last, then set all night in that bake booth. For thirty bucks it came out damn good.
good bad or indifferent we only remember the good things. I think it was 1955 when they p***ed the mininum wage law, I was setting up trays for the "Car Hops" in a "Drive Inn Restaurant," also had to keep the "Soda Fountain" stocked for the two "Soda Jerks" my pay jumped 40 an hour to a whopping buck an hour.so that 99 cent port a wall was an hours wage
Here's some prices from this early 50's Barris price list: Chop top - $475.00 to $650 Channeling - $85.00 25 coat Lacquer paint job - $165.00 and up Also a flyer from well known '60s southern California painter Joe Andersen for a complete pearl paint job for $125.00. I understand Joe had a unique way of painting pearls. He would paint the whole car in a color and then just paint the translucent pearl on the edges of the top, tops of the fenders and edges of hood and trunk. Anywhere the sun may catch the pearlescent, but he wouldn't have to paint the complete car in pearl. Surprisingly, Joe's paint jobs looked very good. Mick
1978, had a 63 corvette convertible, 327 4 speed. Great driver, but ugly yellow paint. All original condition except paint. Took me 6 months to sell that car. Finally sold it for $4500 and at the time, was happy to get rid of it. How times have changed. If only I had hung onto that one? Statement sound familiar?
If yer goin back ya gotta leave your present salary here. I remember back in 61 or 62 when my father (set up man for punch press operations) came home with a giant S#!+ eatin grin on his face. My mother asked him what was up and he said with his raise he was had, for the first time in his life, 100 buck take home in his pay envelope. Big deal back then for a non highschool grad. 2 dollars worth of gas took him back and forth to work for the week, bread was 19 cents, a ton of coal for the furnace was 21bucks, and the house payment was 40 bucks a month. But is still didn't leave much of the 100 left for descretionary spending.
First real job I had in 71 paid $2.35 an hour. Man...I was ****tin in high cotton back then. A bottle of Boones Farm Strawberry Hill got me all the *** I wanted from the girl up the street . Ahhhhh......the good 'ole days.....
watched an episode of "Leave it to Beaver" the other day and they went out to buy Wally his first car..They settled on a running driving 53 Chevy convertable for $200, try and even find one nowadays..one of my personal bests was a 77 Cadillac four door hardtop I bought for 87.50 (I gotta have $100 for it, how about $50 so we settle on 87.50) I win first place $500 at the Demo Derby and drag the carc*** across the scales for $61.00!..still running!...
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