Did Phone Calls Ever Cost Only 2 Cents?

[Fading Fast]

"Woman's Day" was originally the house organ for the A&P Stores -- it was essentially a sales flyer for Sunnyfield Corn Flakes, Eight O'Clock Coffee, and Our Famous Jane Parker Bread, with a few generic articles wrapped around it. You could only buy it at your local A&P, and the two-cent price was a gimmick to make it seem like you were getting a real bargain.

There was actually a lawsuit filed by one Frank Folsom, who claimed that A&P stole his idea of selling a "ten cent magazine for two cents," a case which made it all the way to the New York State Supreme Court, but eventually the case was dismissed, and presumably Folsom died an embittered man over all those pennies that would never be his.

Fantastic piece of information about the lawsuit, especially since many magazine subscriptions (not when you buy it at the newsstand) today are sold at a loss simply to show advertisers a bigger number and commitment of its readers (subscription buyers are viewed as more committed to the magazine than those who buy it at the newsstand even though those buyers are paying more). Somebody had to have this idea first - always cool to learn about that.

 

[Gingerella72]

Completely unrelated, but I was making chili the other day, and asked the butcher for some suet. He had no idea what it was.

Was he a real butcher, or a grocery store employee assigned to work in the meat department that day?

 

[HudsonHawk]

Was he a real butcher, or a grocery store employee assigned to work in the meat department that day?

Well, I think he's a dedicated meat department/animal dissection employee. I'm not sure if he'd qualify as a real "butcher" with any sort of meaningful training though. Anyway, I had to use lard.

 

[Talbot]

As Vitanola pointed out, there has never been a pay phone manufactured for use in the United States that accepted pennies.

However, the in the UK, a payphone call cost twopence -- two pennies -- thruout the Era. There is no way a British penny from the Era could fit in a pair of loafers, but perhaps the Brooks Brothers folks were indulging in a bit of Anglophilia when they came up with that story.

While you couldn't fit a pre-decimalization British penny -- about the size of a fifty-cent piece -- into a pair of loafers, the British farthing is almost exactly the same size as an American cent. But it would take eight of those to equal tuppence, and British pay station coin acceptors only took pennies anyway. So there you go.

Just to complicate matters, an Australian 2 cent piece (back when we had them) was exactly the size of a US dime. It was very handy!

 

[Stanley Doble]

Affordable suet; another reason to pine for the good old days......

Come to think of it, the last time I wanted suet the grocery store clerk didn't know what I was talking about. I had to explain it was beef fat, then he got some from the meat cutter. It wanted to season an iron pot.

By the way the guy who puts the steaks and chops in little plastic trays is a meat cutter. Butcher is a separate occupation or trade. In fact to call a meat cutter a butcher is slightly insulting. Both are skilled trades, just different.

Stanley Doble, Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of America, AFL - CIO Affiliate, Local 1204