It's still wild to me that toasters have always been $20 but extremely expensive lasers, digital chips, amps, motors, LCD screens worked their way down to $20 CD players.
So... Electric toasters came to market in the 1920s, priced from $15, eventually getting as low as $5. Adjusting for inflation, that $15 toaster cost $236.70 in 2025 USD. Today's $15 toaster would be about 90ยข in 1920s dollars... so it follows the story.
On average toasters have always been $20. Wasn't $5 an outlier during dotCom crash homegoods firesales? There are some outliers. I just think it's wild that some coils cost the same as a radioactive laser, ICs, amps, motors, etc. There's a certain minimum cost and the complexity doesn't matter.
Invention is expensive. Innovation is less expensive. Production is (usually) the cheap part. Once the invention and innovation is paid off, it's just production...
