Yahoo! News – True Love’s Christmas Gifts Costs Increase
PITTSBURGH – Forget the partridge in a pear tree. How about a new Jaguar, a BMW 7 Series, a Mercedes-Benz or a 1949 Rolex? The vintage watch and luxury cars would cost as much as all the gifts listed in the yuletide classic “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” according to PNC Financial Services Group Inc.
Each year, the Pittsburgh-based bank does a tongue-in-cheek tally of how much the drummers drumming, pipers piping, turtle doves and golden rings would set you back if you bought them for your true love at today’s prices.
The bank began publishing the list in 1982 for institutional clients and released it publicly the next year.
So what are all the gifts going for this year? If they were bought repeatedly on each day as the song suggests, they’d hit $66,334, up from $65,264 last year.
Buying each item just once would cost $17,279. That’s still enough for a Mini Cooper, a ride in a Russian MiG jet fighter, a 10-acre ranch in Colorado or a 1920s baseball signed by Babe Ruth.
The nine ladies dancing would leave the largest dent in your wallet this year — coming in at $4,400. The eight maids-a-milking are a bargain at $41.20.
Outsourcing, alas, factors into the equation.
“As a result, the cost of skilled dancers has steadily increased, while the unskilled milk maids haven’t managed an increase in pay for many years,” said Jeff Kleintop, chief investment strategist for PNC Advisors.
The prices for the birds — swans, geese, canaries (calling birds), hens, doves and partridges — didn’t change much from last year, coming in at $4,201 compared with $4,138, according to the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Gardens.
But with the declining dollar, you would have saved buying the three French hens last year, when they were $15, compared with $45 this year.
I think I’ll just get my wife an iPod and she’ll have to believe me when I tell her she’s my true love… 