In one of the World Series DVD bonus features, there’s an old video of Smokey Joe Wood saying that his World Series share for 1912 was $4024.70. Using historical rates of inflation (plus some modifications for the period Jan 2002 to Oct 2004), I calculated that $4024.70 would be worth $80,461.95 in October 2004 dollars.
By comparison, a full World Series share in 2004 for each of the Sox was worth $223,619.79. So the Sox made 3 times as much as Smokey Joe Wood did, which is actually less than I was expecting. I wonder if that’s a testament to the fact that the Sox voted a lot more full shares (58) than normal - by comparison, the Marlins gave out 37 in 2003, and the Yankees gave out 32 full shares in 1999.
(Incidentally, if Smokey Joe Wood had invested his share in the stock market, assuming a 7% historical average rate of return, that $4024.70 would be worth $2,032,549 in 2004.)