Every week, “Charts & Graphs” looks past the weekend box-office numbers to examine other lists of movies that are popular right now, as assessed by the likes of iTunes, Amazon, Box Office Mojo, and other services.

Last week, The Hollywood Reporter passed along a report from The National Association Of Theater Owners (the other NATO) stating that the average movie-ticket price in the U.S. for the third quarter of 2014 was $8.08. As the article notes, that’s down from the second quarter—the 3-D/IMAX summer blockbuster quarter—when tickets were averaging $8.33. But it’s way up from last year’s third quarter number of $7.84. That made me curious about the general rate of increase in recent years, which led me to the figures below, taken from the NATO site.

1974 - $1.89
1975 - $2.03
1976 - $2.13
1977 - $2.23
1978 - $2.34
1979 - $2.47
1980 - $2.69
1981 - $2.78
1982 - $2.94
1983 - $3.15
1984 - $3.36
1985 - $3.55
1986 - $3.71
1987 - $3.91
1988 - $4.11
1989 - $3.99
1990 - $4.22
1991 - $4.21
1992 - $4.15
1993 - $4.14
1994 - $4.08
1995 - $4.35
1996 - $4.42
1997 - $4.59
1998 - $4.69
1999 - $5.06
2000 - $5.39
2001 - $5.65
2002 - $5.80
2003 - $6.03
2004 - $6.21
2005 - $6.41
2006 - $6.55
2007 - $6.88
2008 - $7.18
2009 - $7.50
2010 - $7.89
2011 - $7.93
2012 - $7.96
2013 - $8.13

A few notes:

• I’m most interested here in the big jumps. Between 2010 and 2012, for example, tickets went up 4 cents and 3 cents. Yet from 2009 to 2010, the price-jump was a whopping 39 cents, and 17 cents from 2012 to 2013. Given the variable pricing that theaters use for movies that deploy the cutting-edge technologies, the larger gaps could indicate years when there were a larger number of “event” movies.
• It’s odd how often the amount of increase comes to around 20 cents—as though that’s about how much the market will accept.
• How about those decreases in the 1990s? There were some wild fluctuations there in the late 1980s, and then steady declines from 1990 to 1994. Since then: always an increase.
• Do any of you have a ticket price in your head that’s “what tickets cost,” based on what you paid when you first started going to movies with your own money? (For me, it’s 4 bucks.)