You Won't Believe How Much A Carton Of Eggs Cost In 1980

An uncritical idealization of the past is a tale as old as inflation. It can be tempting to look back and imagine how much easier things might have been. Why, the absence of modern blights like social media and AI alone must have been a boon. Money matters can be especially irksome. Before one begins accounting for the fluctuating value of a dollar, it just feels like everything was so much cheaper in the past. New York City apartments, for example, famously all cost 25 cents right before you, personally, came into possession of a quarter. And foodstuffs are no exception.

Back in 1980, for example, when "Funkytown" ruled the radio and the world was only up to two "Star Wars" movies, a carton of eggs cost 88 cents, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. And that should, at first, seem like a shocking sum. You could have a batch of Martha Stewart's perfect scrambled eggs and still gotten change back from one Washington! — until you remember about those vexing vagaries of currency. 88 cents in 1980 was equivalent to $3.67 as of September 2025, the most recent date available from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' CPI-based inflation calculator. And that same agency reported that the average price of a dozen eggs was actually $3.49 as of that same time. So what gives? 

If you were on the internet at all this year, you probably absorbed plenty of screaming headlines about the skyrocketing price of eggs without even trying. Cartons reached $8 a dozen (the equivalent of $3 and over three times the price in 1988), some retailers were forced to limit the number of eggs consumers could buy, and, in New York City, internationally renowned breakfast sandwiches threatened to become luxury items. This also comes after a long period of relative egg affordability and amid stagnating wages, so the optics are still a bit off. It just has not been an egg-cellent year to buy eggs to say the least.

So, even though egg prices have officially ticked back from the age of ruin, a fact that you're hopefully seeing reflected at your local supermarket or grocery store, that panic hasn't yet dissipated. But some of that enduring energy might weigh off when the cost of your baking projects starts making more sense for fewer cents than just a few months ago.