These charts show the retail price of gasoline in the US, given as mg of gold per gallon of gas. They are based on an average price for regular gas in all areas of the country, sampled weekly by the Energy Information Administration.

Prices for gasoline were fairly stable from 1990 to 1999, oscillating around 100 mg/gal. From 2000 to 2008, they became more volatile, varying from 100 to 200 mg, and averaging about 140 mg. In late 2008, as the economy collapsed, gas prices fell to a new low of 57 mg, and have since fallen to about 50 mg today – the lowest seen since 1929. Yet over the time period covered by these charts, the dollar price of gas has gone from under $0.10 per gallon to around $4.00 per gallon, and currently sits at about $2.00 per gallon.

As a child, I often saw gasoline for 25 cents per gallon – in the days when that meant a silver quarter. The melt value of that quarter today is almost $6, another way of pointing out that today's fuel prices, rather than being high, are in fact near their historic lows!

More than 2 decades of weekly US retail gasoline and diesel prices:





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More than 8 decades of US gasoline prices:





click on the chart to download a pdf