BEAVER FUR 159 
inclusive. Sales are held three times in each year (the 
autumn sale was omitted in 1920). The lowest average 
price for all grades of skins was $12.03 at the sale of Janu- 
ary 17, 1921. The highest average price was $40.70, Feb- 
ruary 25, 1920. They dropped to $31.28 at the sale of 
April 27, 1920, and then to the above mentioned minimum, 
$12.03, the following January. 
The highest price at which any skins were sold was $64.00 
each for forty of the highest grade skins, at the February, 
1920, sale, while at the same sale fifty-two of the lowest 
grade pelts brought $8.50 each, dropping to $2.50 at the 
sale of the following April. 
Prices in 1923 averaged between $15 and $16, with a 
maximum of $27.75 for 76 skins, and a minimum of $1.00 
for 162, both of these prices being obtained at the September 
sale. 
As a matter of fact, after the drop of January, 1921, and 
the subsequent moderate recovery at the following sales, 
prices have been fairly steady, averages ranging from $14.46 
to $21.09, with a maximum for the best of $35.50. 
The skins were sold in lots, and labeled I, II, III, IV and 
Cubs (and often also, large, medium, small and dark). 
The total number of beaver skins sold during these five 
years was 115,097, an average of 23,019.4 skins annually. 
The fur traders, in the early part of the nineteenth century, 
put the beaver skins in packs weighing one hundred pounds 
each. James, in the account of Long’s Expedition, says 
there were seventy to eighty skins in a pack. He says the 
usual price per pound in St. Louis was $3.00. This was 
about 1820. Maximilian says there were generally sixty 
large pelts in a pack, and the usual price was $4.00 a pound. 
Some of the early writers on the Far West tell us what the 
traders paid for beaver skins. Alexander Ross, one of the 
party sent out by J. J. Astor on the expedition which founded 
