Watching an old pop video featuring three projection TVs (very appropriate for the song Videotheque) I was wondering how much they cost and soon found http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/80selectrical.html US prices but in the UK the $ £ was always a good estimation and still is. The examples feature a CD radio cassette and a few other cool gadgets. There appear to be other pages for earlier decades as well so I will be looking through those.
It looks like the pricing is list pricing. Over here everything is discounted, appliances used to get really deep discounts. TVs were more like $150-$250 for a good one, a microwave was around $250. This ad is from 1989 for a Sharp TV, these would have been getting really popular over here over the bigger grandma's console that most people had. Zenith had some more modern TVs but the Japanese really had nice looking, much less expensive models.
Checking back on the link the Color TV in the very first listing was 1980. It also had luxury high end features like a remote control This is what JC Penny were offering in 1980 Pretty close to the $589 in the link. I don't know if JC Penny were cheap, or expensive (like many UK "club" catalogues where the emphasis was on the "low weekly repayments"). There was a big difference in prices (going down) from the start to the end of the decade. Supply and demand. In about 1980 they bought a color computer at work to evaluate. Someone was sent to Dixons to get a color TV to plug it into. For the next week many people came from around site to see the new acquisition. Most were mainly interested in the computer but some had the reaction "wow a portable colour TV. What will they think of next ?"
