‘12 Days’ items top $100K

Associated Press

PITTSBURGH

The price of partridges, pear trees and turtle doves has spiked, pushing the cost of every item mentioned in the carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas” above $100,000 for the first time.

Holding mostly steady this year: maids-a-milking, ladies dancing, lords-a-leaping and gold rings.

The 364 items repeated across all the song’s verses would cost $101,119, an increase of 4.4 percent over last year, according to the annual Christmas Price Index compiled by PNC Wealth Management.

Those with the money to spend would end up with 12 drummers drumming, 22 pipers piping, 30 lords-a-leaping, 36 ladies dancing, 40 maids-a-milking, 42 swans-a-swimming, 42 geese-a-laying, 40 gold rings, 36 calling birds, 30 French hens, 22 turtle doves, and 12 partridges in pear trees.

But buying just one set of each verse in the song will cost $24,263 this year — a moderate 3.5 percent rise.

Eleven pipers piping will set you back $2,427, but that’s a relative bargain compared with seven swans-a-swimming, which cost $6,300. That’s a 12.5 percent rise over last year.

Jim Dunigan, managing executive of investment for PNC Wealth Management, said the core rate of increase is less than half the 9.2 percent jump last year.

Five gold rings even declined a bit, Dunigan said, to $645, from $650 last year.

The core list that costs about $24,000 in stores will come to $39,860 online — a whopping 16.1 percent increase over Internet prices last year.

Six items didn’t go up in cost this year: French hens, calling birds, gold rings, maids-a-milking, ladies dancing and lords-a-leaping. Pipers piping and drummers drumming rose 3 percent. The partridge is still the cheapest item, at $15, and swans the most expensive.

PNC Financial Services Group Inc. checks jewelry stores, dance companies, pet stores and other sources to compile the list.