I remember when it was a BIG DEAL if someone paid $1000 for a horse.
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In the 80s and 90s, at least in much of SoCalif., $1,500 allowed you to purchase a decent OTTB. There were a couple of Calif. TB breeders that my sister and I visited every few months for a project horse. For $1,500 we could browse through entire herds of horses. We’d get the chosen prospect going, start them over X’s/low jumps, and then sell them for $5,000. Back then, that gave us a profit! 
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I think it’s kind of remarkable how much the price of OTTBs has stayed consistent over the year. I think I read an article somewhere that said Idle Dice or one of those horses was purchased off the track for $1500 or $2000 or something almost 50 years ago.
And that’s what it will often cost today to do the same thing, depending on the situation. Maybe that’s just the magic number that they have always stuck to at the racetrack to weed out the buyers.
There certainly been times when I was at the track when it felt like they were ready to give me horses for free, or even load them in my horse trailer and run off while my back was turned. Lol.
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When I was in elementary school, I attempted to put together a syndicate. Having spotted a for-sale ad in the “Horses and Livestock” section of the classifieds (remember print newspapers? and classified sections that people actually read???), I figured that if my friends and I put together our piggy bank money, we could buy the advertised Arab for the princely sum of $600.
How we would be able to pay ongoing expenses, or share riding time and care duties among the 8-10 investors, or how the HOA (not to mention my mother) would feel about a horse in the backyard of a townhouse, were all things I never really considered. I was the ideas person, not the accountant.
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When I was a junior one of my riding friends (we all rode at the local riding academy) got a young green but very talented horse from David Hopper and the cost was $5,000. I overheard our instructor saying that she couldn’t believe the parents were willing to pay so much. That friend and his horse were champion in the 3’6" junior hunters a week later at a local show and ended up riding with George Morris in the Big Eq, winning a lot and qualifying and competing at the Maclay finals in MSG. This was late 1960s and when my friend aged out of the juniors his younger brother got the ride and was equally successful…
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That’s wonderful!
The horse I remember did not get anything like that far. Lol.
Side note. I think David Hopper is still in business! 
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My local high-quality weekly paper had the greatest horse classifieds that filled at least half of a broadsheet page. It was dream reading as a kid.
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I think you are right about David! He has to be well into his 80s now, I also got a horse from David as did most of the friends in my group. Another friend got a gorgeous TB from Colony Farm after Benny O’Meara passed away. His brother was selling off the stock and this horse was sold for $3,250 and went on to be champion or reserve every time out one season, and a ribbon winner at MSG. Now a French saddle costs much more than our horses did in those days LOL.
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I thought my pull on Effingham dress boots were the greatest thing on earth. My IRH helmet had a blue satin lining and the ribbon stuck up on the back. I would take the Millers catalog to school to dream about owning a Pessoa Pro-Am saddle some day and pass the time between weekly lessons playing Equestriad 2001 and Mary King’s Riding Star on the family computer.
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I spent several years at the Hill as a teen.
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Before zippered field boots, it took about three people to pull my boots off. 
I still have my boot pulls and a pair of those boots somewhere, as well as my velvet hunt cap.
I also have an enormous collection of tack that is a blast from the past from many different eras! I definitely have a problem when it comes to this and anytime I see something cool for a good price, I must have it!
Off the top of my head:
•Pancake saddles (Crosby Prix des Nations, Crosby Sovereign, Collegiate Graduate)
•Courbette Husar saddles - basically Courbette’s version of the Stübben Siegfried
•rolled Stübben bridle with matching rolled/plaited reins, made in Ireland
•completely white lined Crosby and Stübben bridles
•Campbell bridle with the braided design on the brow and nose
•Dover bridle with clinchers on the brow and nose
•Plenty of pairs of plaited reins, a couple of rolled pairs as well
•Most of the Crosby XL Excel tack
•Crosby USET bridle
•Beval New Canaan bridles
•Never Rust and Eldonian bits
•Balding girth
•Thick wool Beval pad (which my cat has pretty much taken over as her bed )
•Ulster boots
•Beval fleece lined baghide open fronts (and identical ones from Dover)
•Rust breeches from Miller’s
•A few pieces of 1996 Olympics tack from Miller’s
•Buckstitched Hereford Tex Tan Western saddle
•Buckstitched Western headstalls, reins, halters, and leads
•Silver wrapped Western headstall and reins
I’m sure there’s tons more I’m missing, especially with the bridles (I definitely have a problem when it comes to bridles )!
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Clear chinstraps. Wool coats. Two way stretch tailored sportsman. Pull on custom Vogels. No fake tails.
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I “joined” the bitless revolution early.
I bought a jumping cavesson bridle, like the one Kathy Kusner used on one of the horses she jumped, around 1971.
Just the thing for cold trail rides!
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I loved my braided bridle so much. Good memory. Thanks for bringing it back.
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I had one of these! They were bulletproof. Rode in mine for years, and when I finally put it on consignment at a tack store, the store owner argued with me about it – she claimed she could tell that it had never been used, lol.
Sold it for exactly what I’d paid for it umpteen years earlier.
Had the white-lined Stubben bridle, too.
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Cottage Craft girths
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That sounds like a lovely collection! (my cat thinks my plain old cotton saddle pads are the best beds, I don’t think he would ever move if I had a thick wool Beval pad!)
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Ohmygod. I just remembered I had one of those but no earthly idea what happened to it.
Old Salem was originally Salem View (1964), then The Hill (1967), then Far West (1981), then Old Salem (in 1984 to present).
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I don’t have a Beval pad but plenty of the wither relief Wilkers pads. One has been a cat bed for years now
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