Did you all know that Sears used to be in the school textbook business?
Back in the day, many a child growing up on the prairie larnt their letters and their figures from the Sears Mail-Order Catalog. Parents used the catalogs and all the prices and other numbers to teach their children reading and basic arithmetic.
Al Jourgensen?
I wouldn’t start publishing obituary notices yet.
I understand this Prodigy thingamajig is gonna turn them around.
mmm
The Sears catalog is practicaly a time capsule of Americana and trends. This SITE is an archive of old catalogs. Go back to the early 1900’s and about half of it is farm related. You used to be able to buy wagons, buggies, plows, milking machines, saddles, and all. They even once sold house kits.
Then look to the 60’s and 70’s and see the fashion trends.
Check it out.
Leave it to Sears… I can’t even find where to look at the old catalogs. Can you help?
That site is operated by the company itself. It says they have a complete collection of the Big Book catalogs. If the company does go bankrupt, I hope the collection is kept intact and moved to an archive someplace.
Two reasons.
#1–Lampert is a real estate guy.
#2–He’s clearly not interested in the actual retail side of things. I think he pretends to be, but the results say otherwise.
Conclusion–he’s going to run the company into the ground, and then do something with the real estate that the company owns.
I only go into Sears to buy clothes at the Land’s End shop inside. Other than that, nope.
I hope that the LE store remains open!
K-Mart seems to be withering away. Most of the ones around here are gone now, and they have rounds of store closures every year. My wife tells me there’s still one nearby, but if you think I’m going to seek out an effing K-Mart, you’re high.
There’s a KMart near me that seems to be doing well. I end up in there a couple of times a year because they have a huge Barbie section and I have two nieces that are very into Barbie stuff so it makes for easy present shopping. It’s a nightmare in there but always crowded.
The Kmart near me closed a few months back. I got a kitchen table at the closing sales for dirt cheap
They also used to sell guns and motorcycles through the mail. I still have my J.C. Higgins .22 bolt-action, tube fed rifle that I got when I was 12. I also drove one of their scooters (sold under the Allstate brand) for a couple of years.
Your right. I thought that site was an archive.
I’m afraid you’ll just have to look under images or actually buy a catalog reprint.
Incidentally, another interesting FYI. I have a reprint of an old catalog and where they list all the states, one of them is listed as “Indian Territory”. Yep. That was an address at one time.
Another FYI, you know how many things today are written in Spanish? Well back then they had a section written in a foreign language but I think its Dutch and German.
Yes, truly that catalog is its own history book.
I sometimes shop at the Kmart in my town because it’s usually empty. It’s kind of fun to have the whole store to myself. I can pretend I’m a millionaire and they closed the place just for me. Of course, a millionaire wouldn’t shop at Kmart in the first place, but whatever. 
There are a bunch here, a site I had used before, so I was hoping to see more:
It’s not a pretty site, but it works, and the scans are good.
When I lived in Ann Arbor, they had two K-Mart stores close with in a 6 month period, I went in thinking I could find some good deals…signs said everything 40% to 60% off. Well, they marked everything up 40% to 60%, then gave you the discount. The stuff was the same price as the same product at Target.
I actually shop at other Kmart stores pretty regularly. Not so often at Sears, but I do go there every once and a while. The quality of the house brand clothes doesn’t seem to be as good as stores like JC Penny, but they always have a nice selection. I hope they don’t close, but It amazes me that they have lasted this long.
K-Mart went bankrupt yet they bought Sears, not the other way around. How bad of shape must Sears have been in for THAT to have happened?
The people who got Sears aren’t the same ones who ran the old Kmart.
Keep in mind that the people who lost money on Kmart were the stockholders. Over a period of several years, Kmart borrowed heavily to finance wastes like store revamps (they looked the same after as before). The creditors didn’t lose their money. They actually ended up with a company that owned a lot of real estate for not a lot of money. A company that was now debt free! You leverage that to go after the next target. (Note: not “Target”.)
The people who drove Kmart into the ground had nothing to do with the holding company the creditors set up and then glommed onto Sears. (Officially it was a “merger”, but in effect it was a buyout.) Although I wonder if there was collusion between Kmart execs and the creditors, given how easily they lead the company into massive debt and bankruptcy.
My mom had that card and was very loyal to Sears for years b/c that was the first credit card she ever got! I’ll never forget (and this was when I was young, so decades ago) that she would pull that out and the person behind the counter would try to use it in the ‘kathumpy machine’. (Back when actual imprints were made.)
Ahhh memories.
That said, I haven’t shopped at Sears in at least 20 years. (There is a Sears Hardware store near me and I bought a fridge water filter there, but that’s the closest.)
I went to the Sears store in 1970 and paid my car insurance quarterly at the Allstate Kiosk. Someone mentioned they had a motor scooter sold at Sears called an Allstate. It was a Cushman, rebadged. they also sold cars. Before my time seeing them for sale in the stores but remember seeing a few, very few on the streets. they were a Henry J. A Kaiser, I believe, re badged.
I’ve got a full set of Craftsman Ratchets. The good one with the little thumb lever. One of them was frozen and I followed a Youtube about how to take them apart and fix. Works great.
Was in a Kmart a few weeks ago. Empty. Waiting to die. The Sear/Kmart merger reminds me of what my buddy the Fed Bank examiner once told me. Said, it was not uncommon when 2 banks were doing poorly to want to get together and merge. He said his regulators referred to this as… dinosaurs mating.
