"The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it... But though labour be the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities, it is not that by which their value is commonly estimated... Every commodity, besides, is more frequently exchanged for, and thereby compared with, other commodities than with labour." - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776

"What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." - Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892.

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In 2009, the relative worth of $16,000.00 from 1875 is:

	$323,000.00	using the Consumer Price Index
	$303,000.00	using the GDP deflator
	$2,190,000.00	using the unskilled wage
	$3,610,000.00	using the Production Worker Compensation
	$4,050,000.00	using the nominal GDP per capita
	$27,400,000.00	using the relative share of GDP
Data for consumer bundle only starts in 1900.

If you need help/ determining which result is most appropriate for you, see Choosing the Best Indicator to Measure Relative Worth.

Samuel H. Williamson, "Seven Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a U.S. Dollar Amount, 1774 to present," MeasuringWorth, April .

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MeasuringWorth is a service for calculating relative worth over time.