"dear" 'valuable'

[Mark A Mandel]

When did "dear" in the sense 'expensive, valuable, precious' become
archaic in American English? It survives only in a few expressions like
"buy cheap, sell dear" (literal price) and "dearly won/bought"
(figurative price).

I ask because my wife noticed that, although both senses exist in AmE
and Yiddish (as spoken by her parents), the expression "tayer kind" has
a clear connotation of 'precious' that the English lacks. And the only
person I remember hearing use "dear" = 'expensive' in native spoken
English is my grandmother, who (a) was born in 1889 in NYC and (b) grew
up speaking Yiddish at least some of the time. So I am wondering whether
that sense was current in English in my grandmother's childhood or
whether it was a Yiddish substrate effect.

-- Mark A. Mandel
   Linguist at Large