how to get the value of a custom field?

First, let me say that I am a PHP newbie, I am more of a RoR programmer so I am a bit lost in PHP syntax which may explain the simplicity of my question...

Goal: I want to have a form where people can enter the price of the item they want to sell.

How: I used a custom field, gave it a 'new' name of 'price'. I used the form and when I look at the post content, the value is displayed in the custom field section of the post edit page. Then, in my single_post page, I use the following code to display the content of the custom field and it does not work:

<?php get_post_meta($post->ID, 'price', true); ?>

nothing is output and if I do this:

<?php get_post_meta(the_ID(), 'price', true); ?>

it only display the id of the post.

What am I missing? I am sure I am missing something simple since all the method calls seem good.

Thx.

Thx Carl. Created an admin account for you.

That Illinois, I was just too ignorant of PHP... I just replaced the line with:
<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, 'price', true); ?>

and now everything is fine. This is very frustrating for me to move from a language were I know pretty much everything (Ruby) to something new where even the easiest things are evading me!

Guess I will have to read a PHP book afterall!