![]() So Daniel goes back to Emory University, where he works. How could Coke stay a nickel for so long? And the tour guide's like, I don't know. So he basically hijacks the tour, starts asking all these questions. KESTENBAUM: Daniel Levy, you see, is an economist. And Levy thinks, wait - what?ĭANIEL LEVY: When I heard that, I said, can you say that again? And he repeat that, and I kind of grabbed my head, right? I said, how can that be? And so his family's on this tour, and the tour guy just mentions this nickel-Coke thing. But one day, a guy named Daniel Levy took his kids to that museum. And normally, people on the tour will just nod. If you go to the Coca-Cola museum in Atlanta, the tour guide will tell you. You can go to any antique store and see the old signs. KESTENBAUM: It's not a secret that Coke cost a nickel for so long. Today, the strange story of nickel Coke, why it happened, what it says about the textbooks and us. KESTENBAUM: Hello, and welcome to PLANE MONEY. NEW SEEKERS: (Singing) I'd like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I'D LIKE TO BUY THE WORLD A COKE") It's the 5-cent drink of the nation, proof that Coca-Cola quenches your thirst, refreshes your spirits, thrills your taste as nothing else does. Men, women, children the country over drink more Coca-Cola than any other one drink. UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: Coca-Cola is the best drink in the land. And yet, for 70 years, you could buy a Coke for 5 cents. It's the basic mechanism for how markets work. The price of butter goes up and down - corn, cars, houses, everything. The price of a television depends on how expensive the components are to make and the price of labor. The price of gasoline goes up and down depending on how much is available, how many people want it, how hard it is to get out of the ground. ![]() Prices, you can read in any textbook, are supposed to go up and down. And for economists, this is a total freak of nature kind of thing. As late as 1959, you could buy a 6-and-a-half-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola for one nickel. You know what the price of a Coca-Cola was in 1886? A nickel. One final note - today's episode first ran in 2015. If your NPR podcast feeds are still acting funny, please go to npr.org/help. We believe we have fixed the problem, but it is taking a while for that fix to make it to all podcast apps. It happened because of a change NPR made to its web servers that we did not expect to have any effect on podcasts. This was an entirely unintentional mistake. ![]() Lots of podcasts got downloaded into the wrong feeds. You may have noticed that the feed for PLANET MONEY and lots of other NPR podcasts went bananas in the past day or so. ![]() Just a quick note before we start today's show. So before you toss or donate anything, take a look at this list of 55 items that are worth a lot of money today and may just be hiding in plain sight in your storage.Hey. Through the years, items can appreciate in value more than you think. While there is nothing more satisfying than dropping a pile of forgotten goods at the donation center (you know what they say about one man's trash.), it might be worth taking a gander through your hoards of stuff to make sure you're not sitting on a treasure trove. They're those boxes that haven't unpacked in several moves and too many years to count. We all have that stash of boxes, you know the "priceless family heirlooms" that Grandma gave you ages ago. You've looked up how to clean blinds and how to paint a room-and then actually did the work! You've even resorted to Googling " What to do when you're bored." So now it's time to consider tackling the long-neglected task of cleaning out the attic or storage room. We get it-you're stuck at home with a lot of extra time on your hands.
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