Things that are inexplicably cheap

[ChewChewIsMySpiritAnimal]

Inspired by the thread about things that are inexplicably expensive!

My pick is bananas. You can buy a huge bunch of bananas for a few pence - I'm always shocked when i get to the till and find I've got about 22 bananas for less than a quid exaggerating but they've been imported from halfway round the world - yet the British apples next to them are twice as much.

What do you find inexplicably cheap?

Absolutely love the comment 'care workers ' posted by sucking diesel! it is absolutely shocking the pittance these workers are paid doing an emotionally mentally & physically exhausting job ! Minimum wage for bathing, cleaning, feeding, shaving , coping with emotional families ,changing bedding , heaps of paperwork & even being bitten, punched & scratched etc usually 12 hour shifts trying to keep people who are approaching the end of their lives comfortable & if possible happy ! Its shocking they do the same sort of work as nurses (apart from administering medications etc ) it's often very heavy going .. can be stomach churning & generally depressing but these people do their best to put a smile on the face of their residents & get next to zero respect from society on the whole & no financial incentive 🤯 what's wrong with this picture ?

Apparently when M&S brought out their chicken Kiev in the 70s it was £4 which is roughly what it is forty years later. I'm rather uncomfortable with the cost of a whole chicken that will do two meals for three being less than two tiny portions of fish. How can chicken be so cheap?

@woodhill, yes. Average house prices have risen more than average salaries.

Paracetamol and ibuprofen

Pennies

I bought a pair of crutches off amazon for £13 with free delivery after my horse kicked me in the hip. Bargain I thought.

Royal Mail postage - amazing to be able to have a letter or postcode picked up from your street and taken hundreds and hundreds of miles across the country to be delivered the very next day...for 70p...

Calculators

Someone on the other thread is claiming they're too expensive which, as I've pointed out over there, is a bit ridiculous to think that, considering that the price has barely moved in decades, I still have mine since I started secondary school in 1985, and I'm sure it cost £8.99, and they're not much more than that now.

Agree about clothes being too cheap and the sad thing is that if you added a pound to every garment it would increase the amount of money that the people who make them earn many times over. I know that some people in the UK need cheap clothes but it would make far more of a difference to the people earning a few pounds a day than it would to people in the UK, however low paid they are. Poverty in other countries is on a whole other level, and there is often no safety net whatsoever.

Same for fruit and veg that's grown in Spain. A lot is produced in greenhouses by illegal migrant workers who live and work in terrible conditions for a pittance. Even a few pence on a packet of tomatoes would increase their income massively if it made its way to them. I don’t want to exploit people in this way, but what's the alternative?

If you stop buying sweatshop clothes, produce grown in Spain by Africans or Chinese factory tat it further threatens the incomes of the people who often have no other way of earning money but as far as I'm aware, there's no genuine fair trade options for these sorts of goods and many schemes claiming to help simply end up making middle men rich rather than helping the people they claim to help.

£1 t-shirts

Primark clothes

I find it amazing, that I can generally get a prepack of 4 jacket sized potatoes for under £1.

Yet a packet of crisps, which is generally one slightly smaller potato cost the same, or if turned into 🍟, cost more.

The cost per spud to grow, is so little (one seedling potato, sprouts about 30 spuds). Harvesting costs more, but again per spud is so cheap.

The cost is.so low due.to tractors planting, and machinery harvesting.

The expense is probably the storage and transportation.

Production of crisps, is so cheap due.to massive automation. Think about.it....
pour spuds into hopper, spuds sorted n separated by grids... Mechanically.
Spuds peeled, and sliced ... Mechanically
Spud slices sorted from bad slices ... Mechanically and by bloody quick cameras, and jets of air, blowing away imperfect ones.

Deep fried, all by conveyor belt
Drained, ... Conveyor belt
Conveyor belt to flavour station!
Conveyor belt to packaging.

All by conveyor belt, and automated machines.

Greg Wallace did a factory thing not.long ago, and from the time the spuds leave the field, to packs of crisps leaving the factory, is less than 5hrs.

I think a packet of crisps should be cheaper, even the premium.crisps. no matter the style of crisps or poshness, the process is all the same, only difference is actual potato used, and thickness of the slices, and quality of the ingredients.

My local co-op are doing two 2 litre bottles/cartons of milk for £2.20, without being arsed to source all supermarkets at this current time, to me that is pretty cheap!

I agree with others that a lot of food and clothes are ridiculously cheap.

On calculators, I remember my father bringing one home from work in the early 1970s. He was an engineer and normally used a slide rule for any calculations. He demonstrated it to us in awe at what it could do and told us that it had cost £250, which was a huge amount of money in those days. You could probably buy a more complicated one today for £10.00.

My first television was a 12" black and white portable, which I bought for £60 in 1979.

"I bought a pair of crutches off amazon for £13 with free delivery after my horse kicked me in the hip. Bargain I thought."

Wouldn't you get those free on the NHS?

"i know families who earn way more than we do but still insist on shopping in the cheapest places for food"

And are you noticeably healthier than those families?

@BarbaraofSeville the Co-op sell fair trade tomatoes from Morocco if you're interested :) my local one doesn't always have them but I buy them if I see them.

I have a local news paper cut out from about 1976 my photo was taken at school, on the back is an advert for Rumbelows and TV’s are £150 😮 how did anyone afford it

The only thing that isn’t cheap now (for myself) is housing costs (higher % if my wage goes towards them) and if I use public transport and running a car (essential for work)

Everything else is so much cheaper we buy so much more than ever but like most of us I can’t often afford to think about the ethics when purchasing food/products

@Fifthtimelucky

I agree with others that a lot of food and clothes are ridiculously cheap.

On calculators, I remember my father bringing one home from work in the early 1970s. He was an engineer and normally used a slide rule for any calculations. He demonstrated it to us in awe at what it could do and told us that it had cost £250, which was a huge amount of money in those days. You could probably buy a more complicated one today for £10.00.

My first television was a 12" black and white portable, which I bought for £60 in 1979.

In the mid-1970s calculators were so expensive the shops used to display them in locked cabinets.

I have a local news paper cut out from about 1976 my photo was taken at school, on the back is an advert for Rumbelows and TV’s are £150 😮 how did anyone afford it

It was pretty common to rent TVs rather than buy them. We always had a TV but I don't think we owned one until I was about 8 or 9

@EnthusiasmIsDisturbed

I have a local news paper cut out from about 1976 my photo was taken at school, on the back is an advert for Rumbelows and TV’s are £150 😮 how did anyone afford it

The only thing that isn’t cheap now (for myself) is housing costs (higher % if my wage goes towards them) and if I use public transport and running a car (essential for work)

Everything else is so much cheaper we buy so much more than ever but like most of us I can’t often afford to think about the ethics when purchasing food/products

TVs were rented in the 70s and 80s

Silicon mostly they were (ours was from Radio Rentals) but they could be bought.

Shoes. They haven’t changed in price for decades.

Apart from Clarks. They're so expensive now I expect to see diamonds in the soles.

Meat is ridiculously cheap in supermarkets but the quality and taste are appalling.

I indulged this week and bought a kilo of braising steak and four minted lamb chops. It came to £27 but OMG the difference in quality and taste! The steak (in a ghoulash) literally melts in your mouth and DH and I were slavering over the chops last night. I slow cooked them and we just had them with new potatoes and peas. DH declared it the best meal I'd ever cooked. The cheap supermarket chicken in my freezer is not calling to me. You get what you pay for.

Yes I am well aware that TV’s were rented we rented a TV. Few people had credit cards but some people were wealthy enough and many saved until they could afford to buy

We paid around £600 to get a shower fitted in the mid 80’s money was form savings I don’t think it would cost anymore now too but it was a real luxury (we didn’t have central heating I think that was too costly)

@SiliconHeaven is your post meant to imply there is something factually incorrect about the £150 price? What do you mean? Of course you could buy a TV (thought hey were prohibitively expensive for many hence the popolarity of rentals).

Sometimes I think people just come to MN to be antagonistic for no reason.

"I bought a pair of crutches off amazon for £13 with free delivery after my horse kicked me in the hip. Bargain I thought."

Wouldn't you get those free on the NHS?

Ironically, the procurement process, let alone the cost of the crutches themselves, would almost certainly cost the NHS more than £13.

My DM once told me about how books were much more expensive when she was a child (in the 40s). Her family were average working-class, but they weren't particularly impoverished - first house in the street to get a (9-inch) telly and everybody crowded in to watch the Coronation! Her parents really valued education, so it wasn't like they just didn't prioritise them.

She could remember when she got her first book, which remained her only book for some time. Children who were lucky enough to have them would read the same book again and again and lend them to each other to make the most of them.

Children today won't remember their first books, because they're plentiful even from far too young an age to be able to have that memory. They're piled up in charity shops and jumble sales for 5p or 10p each and people will frequently hand bulging bags of them away to anybody who will take them.

I had a flyer drop out of a magazine a while ago asking for people to support a charity that provides books to children whose parents can't afford them. This really surprised me that such a thing is necessary nowadays, as books are so easily available for pennies or even free. I could understand if it were a case of the parents not valuing books at all, as it obviously requires an adult to actually source and give the books to the child, however much they did (or didn't) cost; but the leaflet specifically said that 'Billy's' mum loved him greatly but just could not afford to buy him any books. I can't say it doesn't make me a bit and wonder if that is the truth in the vast majority of cases.