Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The Sears catalog-The Amazon of its time

If you were a farm kid during the late forties and fifties ,this was your dream book . They got much use out in the barn before playboy came along.
https://www.history.com/news/sears-catalog-houses-hubcaps

[quote=Hunt.z]. In the early sixties, I bought my first scuba gear, in 1963 from Sears catalog!

Still using a sears Ted Williams 30 30 an uncle of mine bought mail order

Page after page after page of guns you could order through the mail. The good old days.

I just wish I was that man on page 602!

As a kid, I loved shooting them with my .22 to see how many pages various brands of ammo would penetrate.


When wife #2 and I were house-hunting 20 years ago, we were looking at a house that had a plaque showing that it was a Sears house.

I used to own a house that was bought from the Sears catalog. Came on the train. “They don’t make them like that anymore”. And that’s a good thing!

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Grandma bought me my first fly rod from the sears catalog in about 1980 for Christmas.

I used Sears right up to the bitter end. Well pump, pressure tank, Sears appliances, 2 day parts on everything, tools, tires, clothing, free service calls...doesn't sound like a big deal, but when you live a hundred miles from the nearest big town, it was a very big deal.

Heck we loved the wishbooks from Sears, Penny's, and Montgomery Wards back in the 1960's and early 1970's. Guns, motorcycles, car engines, anything! We always kept the old ones in the outhouse for reading and wiping! Telephone books worked better than the glossy pages of the catalogs.

I have seen the estate of Rihard Sears, at the Redwood Falls Museum.

Shortly after we moved back to the US my mom got a job on the sales floor at Sears. Back when Sears would hire full-time with benefits. Shortly thereafter we became a one-income family; Sears.

She worked there 25 years full time and retired. Long before they folded Sears stopped hiring full time, we got lucky.

The Sears-branded 17’ aluminum Grumman canoe I bought in ‘74 presently sits in my nephew’s back yard. He still uses it.

This website has Christmas catalogs from the late 30’s on. Pretty interesting. My late dad was a rural route carrier from ‘46 til ‘76, he delivered thousands over the years. Once the word got out, folks would be waiting at the mailbox. I never heard him complain, I think he enjoyed delivering them.

http://www.wishbookweb.com/

I have a 14' Sears Gamefisher jonboat.

We always had the big 2 inch thick Sears, JC Penny's, and Wards catalogs laying around when I was a kid. Can't remember JC Penny or not but Sears and Wards had a big gun and hunting gear section in them.

I know of 2 milking barns bought through the Sears catalog. One collapsed last year from neglect but the one we drive past to get to our cottage was built in 1918. According the the grandson of the original farmer the only materials that were locally sourced was the concrete and the sill plates. Everything else was delivered by rail and then transported 15 miles by horse drawn wagons to the sight.

I can remember having want list out of sears, Montgomery wards, and service merchandise catalogs

I'm still using a Sears Craftsman 12" lathe made in the 1960's. It makes me plenty of pocket change doing contract machining for the quality control department at a local foundry.

On my grandparents farm without water or electricity in 1956, last year's Sears catalog was the toilet paper in the outhouse.