I have the original loan paperwork for my '84, from when my uncle's step-father purchased her new. I'm not home now, but I can post the number tomorrow after I get home. I want to say it was in the $10K to $12K range in 1983 dollars (the truck was purchased in '83 as an '84 model year), but I don't remember for sure...
I was actually off low
my truck originally sold for $15,187 in October 1983. From the inflation calculator on this site:
http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm that's $35,611 in 2013 dollars.
That's for an F-250 SuperCab 4x4 with every option available for the 1984 model year except an automatic transmission. BTW as a side-note, when I was growing up in the mid to late 1990's, I regularly did a website "build and price" on my dream truck at the time, which was a Dodge diesel
sorry: I've been a 6BT Cummins fan ever since I knew that diesels were available in pickup trucks), and the MSRP was consistently about $30K. My truck, in 1999 dollars, would have sold for just over $25K...so, between 1983 and 1999, an essentially similar truck's price inflated about $5K. I just did a "build and price" for a 2014 F-250 that would essentially be identical to my '84 (XLT, and I chose any options that my truck has and didn't select any options my truck doesn't have), and the MSRP is $51,290. Using the same inflation calculator, that would have been $36,587 in 1999, and $21,873 in 1983. I wonder what that 2014 F-250 would sell for if a 6 speed manual transmission were an option?
FWIW...
I was actually trying to make an argument that truck prices had inflated far past what they should have, and frankly, based on this info, my argument's debunked. Considering how much even a base model's improved in terms of creature comforts, it's really not a bad buy based on the info I found and posted. At the same time, especially for a pickup truck, I like the idea of being able to wrench on it myself and I REALLY don't like automatic transmissions, so there's still an argument for the old iron
it's really a matter of what your personal preferences are...