Beverage Prices in the USSR

I decided to look at the catalog from an economic perspective and summarize the prices based on the information on the caps. I don't claim to be exhaustive; besides the glass containers we gravitate toward, there were others, like "triangular" milk containers, but we'll leave that out of the equation.

Beer

A popular price in the catalog is 25 kopecks. You'll often see something like "25 к.б/п," which means "25 kopecks without container," meaning the price for the product itself—beer, in this case. Today, it's unthinkable for the price of the container to be comparable to the product itself. In fact, it wasn't that expensive back then either; a deposit was administratively imposed to encourage reuse. The system worked well; up to 80% of the containers were returned to the factory.

A 0.5 liter bottle of Zhigulevskoye cost 25 kopecks. The price remained the same for many years, only during late 80th did it rise to 30, then 35, and even 70 kopecks. At some point, a number of factories stopped printing prices altogether; the stamp was left blank. It's truly amazing that prices were so stable. This applies to all goods. Often, they were simply imprinted on the product. For example, I still see prices of 40-55 kopecks on my cutlery.

There were other prices for Zhigulevskoye, for example 19 kopecks at Stepan Razin. Cheaper due to the smaller capacity of the bottle - 0.33 l. Slavic beer cost 29 kopecks. In the Baltics, prices were 21, 25, 26, 30, 34 kopecks depending on the container and the type of beer.

Bottles

Let's dwell on bottles separately. In Soviet times, they were a kind of currency - they were willingly accepted for good money. A person could return glass containers and make it to payday on the money received. A 0.5-liter beer bottle cost 20 kopecks (before 1981, 12 kopecks). There were several standard bottle types, the parameters of which were regulated by GOSTs (dairy, other). Big glass containers from vegetables were also accepted. They could be rejected if the container was chipped or dirty.

Other drinks