“On the Berlin black market ten packs of cigarettes, which an American soldier could obtain for 50 cents in a PX, had the purchasing power of $100. A cheap Mickey Mouse watch might be worth as much as $500.” One GI who served in the city in the immediate postwar period told of a comrade who bought a beautiful villa for fifty cartons of cigarettes. “The villa is still owned by his widow,” the ex-GI wrote fifty years later.
