Huh. I have many bookstores a 10 - 20 drive away. One of them has 18,000 square feet of space. New bookstores, used bookstores, specialty bookstores.
A great many simple household objects and tools are now shoddily made out of plastic when they once were standardly well-made out of sturdy materials. To find the well-made objects of yesteryear you have to go to niche markets online, or in some cases, antique stores. Sometimes the Amish and Mennonites make and offer such things. But you can’t find them in stores. Things like brooms, laundry baskets, garden tools.
Yep, same here. I need petite sizes and they have all but disappeared from stores. Sometimes I try on a style in a store in the regular size and pray it will fit properly if the sleeves/pants hem is shorter, then order petites online.
Speakers. I bought a turntable a couple of years ago and needed to get some speakers for it, but couldn’t find the kind I needed at Walmart or Target. Even Best Buy didn’t have a very good selection. There a few audiophile stores in my area, but they specialize in high end equipment, and I wasn’t looking to spend a huge amount of money.
I finally decided to just buy a pair online for about $100.
Electric can openers.
This one may have been mentioned and I just missed it, but how about postage stamps? I remember when you could buy them at drugstores, supermarkets and a lot of other places but those days seem to be gone. No where in our little town has them, that I know of, except the post office itself. I use maybe one book every year and a half or so and always end up having to make a trip to the post office when I run out.
I can still buy them in the supermarket at face value . What I don’t see anymore is the vending machines in stores, that charged a little more than face value.
Note that you can also buy them online with no shipping charges:
Minor mod nudge: Please keep this to brick and mortar stores. No online stuff in this thread would be better.
Front and rear bicycle reflectors. They still come standard on every bike, but god help you if some little shits vandalize your bike and you need to replace the reflectors.
Walmart, Target, even The Academy… they all sold a variety of red and white lights, but none of them sold reflectors. I already have lights. USB rechargeable. I need the reflectors for the irregular but hardly freak occurrence where I haven’t had a chance to charge my lights (or have just plain forgotten to reattach after charging) but find myself out at night. That’s not a job for more lights, that’s a job for something that stays attached to the bike at all times and doesn’t need power.
Reflectors.
The problem is that the rest of my household turns the AC down low, and I got outvoted on my comfortable temperature. It’s ironic, but the hight of summer is when I could most use an electric blanket 
.
That thread about oddly specific retail stores that got revived recently made me thing of one – flags (unless that flag store at the Mall of America is still in business). Sure, you can buy an American flag at any Wal-Mart. But what if you need a French flag for whatever reason, maybe you’re hosting visitors from France and want to fly it as a sign of respect. Where are you going to buy that other than online?
Where did you use to be able to buy French flags?
That does seem a little out of left field. Maybe New Orleans?
I’ve remember seeing Italian & Irish flags in stores and a few currently have Ukraine Flags. I feel like that is about it here.
There was a shop in a local mall that had nothing but flags and banners. They had a huge inventory, but no customers. Six months later it was an eyebrow threading boutique, then something else, then empty.
That mall is now a ghost town.
You still can, at some supermarkets and drug stores and many Walmart locations. Visit the USPS Location Finder and under “Location Types” select “National Retailer.” That said, my tiny town which doesn’t have a drug store or a real supermarket has no such locations. There are about a dozen places in two larger adjacent towns.
The U.N. gift shop?
@kayaker has it – I have seen stores in malls that sold nothing but flags, from pretty much every country in the world, back in the 1990s. I once bought a Soviet flag from such a store on a lark. Maybe they were never that widespread, but I would assume they’re pretty much extinct now.
Every cd I’ve ever purchased ripped to FLAC, some MP3s from eMusic and Amazon, lots of stuff from Bandcamp. I have very broad tastes and I’m something of a completist.
My town has a flag store that’s been in business since 1992. It’s kind of fun in there, with hundreds of different flags on display and in boxes (I needed a flag for our scout troop). I think they’re also behind the store in the Mall of America. He’s part of the effort to redesign the Minnesota state flag (about time).