This paper presents the hitherto largest historical dataset of skill-premiums for Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern and Eastern Asia, tracing long-term trends in relative prices of labor skills back from the 1870s up to the early 21^st century. Our series reveal three new stylized facts that so far have gone unnoticed in the development literature. First, we show that skilled artisanal and white-collar labor tended to be far more expensive in Africa and Asia on the eve of the global schooling revolution than it had been in pre-industrial Europe. Second, our series reveal that the relative price of skills was on average much higher in Africa than in Asia. Finally, we document a dramatic free-fall in skill-premiums during the 20^th century in both regions, ultimately converging to levels long witnessed in the early industrializers. While the timing and intensity of the decline in skill-premiums varied from place to place, the free-fall was universal. We explore why the relative price for skilled workers around 1900 were so much higher in Africa than in Asia and why these price gaps converged so rapidly in the course of the 20^th century.