Chuck, I know this is not the answer you are looking for but, here is one example.

[LITTLE ROCK] NATIONAL DEMOCRAT, February 4, 1865, p. 4, c. 1

The following item from the Arkansas paper [Washington Telegraph], is suggestive:

"A few pairs of cotton cards will be exchanged for pork at the rates of 200 lbs. for each pair. Enquire at this office."

Before the war a pair of cotton cards were worth 60 cents and pork eight cents a pound. Two hundred pounds of pork would then buy from twenty-five to thirty-five pairs of cards. Now, it seems, it buys only one.

Mike