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Matchbox Collector’s Catalog, 1973 / Matchbox cars were highly prized by 1960s and 70s-era boys… Continue reading The Original Hot Wheels
Montgomery Wards, 1947 / These fellows, thanks to their snappy working wear outfits, could pitch hay or fill up your tank equally well Continue reading What the Working Man Wears
Neiman-Marcus Christmas Book, 1969 / One of the the most famous items ever placed for sale ($10,600) in a catalog, the “Honeywell Kitchen Computer” was the first time most people were introduced to something we might now call a “home computer.” Continue reading If she can only cook as well as Honeywell can compute.
Johnson-Smith Novelty Company, ca. 1950 / The “Magic Walking Coil” is one of 14 products crammed on one page. What kid could resist the Life-Like Glove Monkey or maybe the Luminous Plastic Pin-Up Girls? Continue reading It Walks!
Pep Boys Catalog, 1920s / A tire with a guarantee of 12,000 miles for a bargain price of under $7! Continue reading 12,000 miles for $6.66
Top Value Stamps, 1957 / If he does, it’s either photography with cheap cameras, or hunting and fishing… Continue reading Has Hubby a Hobby?
Siegel-Cooper sales catalog, 1905 / Women were certainly thinner then… Continue reading Spring Fashions for 1905: $2.95 and $3.95
“They know me as a catalog and yet on lonely nights
I bring them dreams and fancies and a wealth of real delights.” Continue reading 1933: Sears Commissions a Poem
In the middle of the 20th century's Great Depression, Sears Roebuck and Co., the nation's biggest retailer, coined a name for their Christmas catalog: the “Wish Book.” Maybe it was because in 1935 too many families could only wish they could buy all the wonderful things pictured in it's pages. But the name stuck, because … Continue reading The Wish Book: A Century of American Catalogs
