Should a house with 60A service with gas water heater dryer and furnace be upgraded to 100A or 150A if you want to add an electric range and AC and have a lot of electronics?

Most places the electric company will be happy to upgrade you to 200 amps. Even 400 if you are thinking of an electric tankless water heater. If your electric company limits you, you can still put in the 200 amp box you eventually may need, but with a smaller main breaker.

I still have the same old wire, box, and 100 amp main as when my house was built in 1970. Some time the electric company put in a 200 amp meter. I don't know if it is new meter socket, but it is still the old housing.

The only thing I can see that is new is the meter itself. 2 wire nonmetallic cable and 2 wire receptacles are still available to repair existing 2 wire installations. It is legal and required to use that in most of the USA.

A DIY needs to shop carefully. You don't want to use 3 wire material on a 2 wire system. You don't want to use 2 wire material on a 3 wire system.

12/2 is 2 wire ungrounded. 12/2 G or 12/2 w/G is with a grounding conductor. A 200 amp service ends up being a little bit more expensive because the panel, the meter socket and the wire is more money.

The wire needed is the service drop(down the side of the house(or from the pole on an underground service) and the 5 or six feet from the socket to the panel. All meter bases have been CL200 for quite a few years now. That doesn't mean that they all support 200A service they way they're installed, though.

But the meter base should not be a cost difference in 100A vs. 200A unless you already have a smaller meter base and your jurisdiction and utility will let you re-use it in a project of this scale. If it is a modern(ish) base and not something like an A-base, you're going to get a CL200 meter the next time they do scheduled meter replacement anyway. I've watched the utility do this in CL100 bases lots of times.

Your utility may or may not upgrade their part of the project (wire on poles / transformers / drop to your house). Around here, they won't do it unless the billing shows that you're using close to the rated capacity of the existing stuff. As an example, I had a job which replaced 2 100A panels in a 2-family with 2 200A panels.

The utility refused to ugrade the drop from the pole. In an 40-unit apartment house job I looked at but declined to bid on, the service feeders were actually hot to the touch. I guess I shouldn't complain too much - in New York City ConEd would run jumpers out of manholes across sidewalks when the service feeder failed.

I've also seen them run cables from streetlights (2, to get 240V) aerially to a residence because they didn't want to replace the underground facility. That one lasted for 5+ years. If you need the panel space (number of breakers), a 200A panel may actually wind up being less expensive.

Let me explain - certain popular panels are heavily discounted at places like Lowe's and Home Depot - the QO 200A 40-position panel was $192 at both for a number of years. At the same time, the QOM2100VH 100A main breaker needed to downgrade that panel for 100A service was $250 and not carried by either store. $250 buys a good amount of service entrance cable upgrade.

I'm a bit worried about your ungrounded 3-prong receptacles - somebody took a shortcut (badly, as you also mentioned they're all hot/neutral reversed) and they probably did other stuff incorrectly as well, which you'll need to hunt down and fix. Visit Terry Kennedy's homepage! Newer codes require more dedicated circuits.

While the amperage draw on those may be minimal you still need physical slots for the breakers to fit. Figure a 100 amp panel has 20 slots, and a 200 has 40. Read this, memorize it, then print it and carry it in your wallet.

If you ever have any thoughts of remodeling the kitchen, expect to need more new circuits than you ever dreamed of.