Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The Old Mail Order Catalogs

Herters, Sears, Wards,and in Canada, Simpson Sears, and Eaton's, others?

Do you still some shop mail order, or mostly online?

I used to buy a lot of stuff through Netcraft. Tackle and rod building supplies mostly.

EBay has most anything a person would want. And there is GunBroker.

I learned how the world works through the Sears catalog. When I discovered they had specialty catalogs you could order I ordered the farming and ranching catalog (or whatever it was called). It showed me a whole new world!

For instance, dozens of kinds of fence wire. That gave me a lot to think about regarding the different needs of horses, calves, goats, chickens, excluding rabbits from a garden and on and on. Incubators, all kinds of waterers. All different kinds of shovels, scoops and forks, each with a distinct purpose. I was a city kid who felt like he had crash-landed on an alien planet and wanted so badly to live a rural life. The Sears catalog showed me what I might find there.

I wish I could remember all the specialty catalogs they had. Industrial catalog, auto shop catalog. I bet they had a dozen of them.

always been a mail order/on-line buyer..........

usually no tax/free shipping..........except Amazon is taxed now for Utah residents....

Gun Broker........good for buying...if you get a deal...........

selling ? fees are high...........but the site gets alot of traffic.........

Cabelas..Bass Pro...........can all take a hike...........

I've always been a big fan of flipping though catalogs for my hobbies. I don't recall the last time I actually received a catalog and called in an order, I've been ordering online for a long time.

Use to sit for hours going through the Herters catalog

I used to spend hours going through catalogs looking at stuff.

Then there were, and are all the seed catalogs, Early May, Henry Field, and more.

J C Whitney had a ton of car and truck stuff. I remember getting the original Gander Mountain catalogs. They gave Cabelas a lot of competition back in the day. Herters even had their own branded 4 wheel compound bows. Remember the old 4 wheel bows. I LOVED getting catalogs in the mail before Gores invented the interweb.

Remember when puberty stricken young boys learnt about sex thru moms JC Penney lingerie catalog?

Yeah, I spent a fair amount of time looking at the women's swimsuit and underwear sections back in the day. Sears & Roebuck, Montgomery Ward, and Spiegel. That was more than 55 years or so ago! I remember well the Gander Mountain catalog also. My father used to get a sales paper that was about the size of Shotgun News that was called the Construction Bargaineer. It was full of all sorts of used construction equipment, such as trucks, bulldoziers, army surplus equipment, generators, jeeps, etc. Also army surplus catalog from Ruvel & Co. and a few others I cannot seem to recall. I spent quite a few hours browsing them all. I remember we actually mailed in orders to Sears and Gander Mountain and others. No such thing as telephone orders as there was no credit card numbers to pay with. All orders were handwritten and mailed with a check or money order. Seems like ancient times now. I actually remember seeing and using pages from a catalog in an old outhouse at a country church as toilet paper. Kinda reminds me of that old Joe South song: "Don't It Make You Want To Go Home" - ..."but the river don't flow and the grass don't grow like it did in my childhood days"...

The Herters catalog had everything anybody would need...coming from a small town far from anything, it was our window to the world. Great place for a young kid to get lost for hours. Several years back my brother gave me an original 1964 Herter's catalog for Christmas.

you are dating yourself as Herters took the dirt nap about 40 years ago, about the same time Sears and Monkey Wards did

Amazon is no longer the cheapest place online to buy stuff. Little by little, they've jacked up their prices. Almost invariably, I can shop on Amazon but end up buying elsewhere at a lower price, including shipping. Of course 'free' shipping isn't. They just hide it in the prices.

The only outhouse advise I got was stay away from the slick pages!!

Internet shopping replaced mail order catalogs for me a longtime ago but as a kid I looked forward to the big Sears, JC Penny's, Cabelas, and Gander Mountain catalogs.

I probably have a few old Sears Crafstman tool catalogs around here someplace. If I find one I am going to hang on to it. Sears ain't long for this world.

As I remember cabelas bought out the gander mt catalogue devission.....that was the story anyway.....that was way before cabelas got huge....they still just had the Sydney and Kearny stores.....I think that was in the 80 s ...I too liked the gander catalogues ...

I used to order a bunch of tackle thru them as a kid as well.

I remember the catalogs very well! I purchased my first scuba gear from Sears, around 1966. I saved a long time for that treasure! Now days I look up what I want on line, then try to buy local when ever possible! I really like to look at and touch most things prior to buying! I still have a couple old Sears catalogs, can't seem to bring myself to throw it away! Didn't look at the undies much, my older sisters had a couple friends, that used me as their practice kissing and making out dummy!! Life was rough as a 14 year old!!

first one I saw, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I didn't know what half that crap was, but I wanted to find out!

Sycamore

have a collection of sears and roebuck catalogs, starting in 1901. you could buy complete houses through them. down to the last nail!
in my wife's old medicine cabinet she has montgomery wards and co. catalog and buyers guide's starting 1885. some cool stuff in them all.
when i was a kid we had a outhouse until i was 7. used many catalog pages. thought i had died and gone to heaven when our church got i indoor toilet instead of the two holers.
i always figured Gander Mountain shot themselves in the foot when they stopped the catalog. have never bought another thing from them since as there has never been a store where i lived.

As a boy I would also read the Herters catalog cover to cover.

A really interesting catalog - Dixie Gun Works. I read it like a book, cover to cover.

I spent some quality time with the Grizzly Industrial catalog a couple of weeks ago, wound up ordering a few items. Man, that catalog has grown since I first saw one.

I still have a couple of Herter's catalogs from around late 1960's, early 70's. My brother and I ordered a few things from them, mostly low priced stuff. I remember reading all that B.S about old George Herter. and how everything he did or sold was always the best. At one time I came within a hair of ordering a J9 Herter's rifle. Wish now I had.

Anyone remember the hubbub when it appeared that the winky of one of the male underwear models in the Sears catalog was poking out of his briefs?

Almost as scandalous as the revelation that the Ivory Snow girl was a porn actress.

Nowadays, of course, the winky might be showing in the Ladies' section, and you'd damn well better think it's just fine.

Just about a week ago I was looking through my 1958 Herters catalog, wishing I knew then what I know now.

Looking at all of the past tense verbs in responses, I would say the overwhelming consensus is no to the first phrase and yes to the second. Any catalogs I get nowadays go from the mailbox straight to the recycling bin since everything in them is online anyway. They used to be a great source of product information when they were the only source of that info, but those days are over.

You guys that got to use the catalogs in the outhouse sure were lucky. All we had were corncobs. A big bucket of red ones, and a smaller bucket of white ones. You only used the white ones to see if you needed to use another red one.

Laptops are not even a close 2nd in revealing one's social/economic standing within the community. I haven't read all 4 pages to see if this was mentioned, but no laptop can tell you what an outhouse tells you that has the current previous season's wishbook.

Sears also had a Willys Jeep specialty catalogue. I had a 1946 Willys CJ2A jeep and needed to rebuild it. What few parts I could not get from the Sears Jeep catalogue, I got from J.C. Whitney's catalogue.

L.W.

I still have a1964 Hodgon catalog with gun prices

I certainly remember these catalogs with great fondness. I sure bought a ton of stuff from Herters, especially since ALL their products were described as "world famous, the greatest, the finest, etc." I used my hard earned dollars form cutting grass and delivering papers to buy stocks, stock making supplies, reloading dies, hunting clothing, etc. Rarely did the product live up to its extreme hype. I've always wondered who the dishonest catalog writers were. I wonder if they ever felt regret or were they cut from the mold of Bernie Madoff.