For All Those Who Remember The 80’s Just Look Back At The Prices ‍♂️

My motorcycling really took off in the 80's and
I've previously shown this on this site for very similar reasons.

 

In 1976 l bought a brand new 400/4 for £699...really wanted a T160 Trident but couldn't spring the requisite £1,215. Honda was sound enough anyhow

 

Here you go.....

 

I remember in the 80's trials bikes being in the £100's like about £800 except the RTL 250 (Not TLR) and that was something ridiculous like £2500.
Now that was supposedly something trick with nice touches here and there, but well out of my grasp as a poor apprentice.

 

1980's line-up - Mopeds, Lightweights, Sport & Touring and On/Off Road.

Yamaha website today - Supersport, Hyper Naked, Sport Heritage, Sport Touring, Adventure, Off Road, 125's, Urban Scooters, Sport Scooters and E-Bikes.

Life was so much simpler then!

 

Wages of course were much lower back then, at least mine was! I think I was on about £5000 a year in 1980 which was a pretty good wage at the time as I recall

 

1983 as a new 16 year old apprentice, £2500 year.

 

You youngster you

 

My first bike cost me two pounds and ten shillings, people could not give away old British bikes back then. A few years later, and a really nice Ariel Arrow set me back six pounds.

 

All this nostalgia about wages back in the day brings on a smile. Can you remember what your first weekly wage packet was and when?

 

All this nostalgia about wages back in the day brings on a smile. Can you remember what your first weekly wage packet was and when?

A Golden Arrow? My first machine was a Leader. Only ever owned four bikes and still got three of them.

 

As far as I can remember my first wage or salary was in 1964 at the Westminster Bank and it was £375 per YEAR! I was 16 then and the proud owner of a Honda C100 - 49cc Step through Cub. It ws about 1year - 18months old and cost less than £100 but I can't remember exactly how much.

At that time you were allowed to leave school at 15, I left at 16 after completing a few 'O' levels. How times have changed

 

Mine was a year earlier in 62 for a local authority that is no longer for the princely sum of £5/week or £260/year. I too did the O levels but missed out on English which took me another year before I could become a student member of my professional institution.

 

1980 as a 16 year old apprentice fitter with a small engineering firm I was on £1/hour, £40/week. My mates who were in the shipyard were probably on about £25/week.
Twelve months later I was still an apprentice but working for the Andrex makers on quite a bit more money but not sure how much. I spent the first year with this company in the shipyard training school, still on more than my mates, and I remember getting a tax rebate and picking up a wage packet of £231! I was absolutely minted
Obviously it all went on bikes and booze

 

1970, started in an architect's office with day release to Building College - 17 years old, £5 a week, 1959 Triumph 500 built from boxes of parts which cost £35.

 

Weekly wage doesn't really count because it was a paper round and then a weekend job at a petrol station in the village.

First actual real salary was £3200 per year as a trainee naval officer, upped to £4800 after moving to the Royal Marines, earning my green lid and qualifying as a pilot. Then £5400 when I went operational and got promoted. At this stage I was on roughly the same salary as a provincial dustman. And I spent pretty much all of it on motorbikes.

 

Years or dates, would be a bonus for amusement ?