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210 points benbreen | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.2s | source
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honkycat ◴[] No.41084860[source]
I wonder how old they were, they are quite good!

I've often wondered if people back then were more skilled at music and art overall since there were fewer mindless leisure activities.

But, at the same time, I'm sure a guitar or ink and paper were comparatively expensive, so who knows.

Plus people could drink at 10 back then, so I'm sure they found plenty of mindless distraction.

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1. Archelaos ◴[] No.41085183[source]
> But, at the same time, I'm sure a guitar or ink and paper were comparatively expensive, so who knows.

When I once came across the price for paper in mid 18th century Germany (I did not keep a reference unfortunately), I compared it to the estimated average annual wage of that time and used today's average annual wage to calculate a price in Euro. The result: the price of a DIN A4 sized piece of paper (623.7 cm²) was aprox. 1 Euro. Not cheap, but in principle still affordable in low quantities for most people. And this is half of today's typical price for one such sheet of handmade paper.