Yep, Sears Silvertone guitar, everyone had one! Cheap guitars that everyone seemed to own, oh and Craftsman tools, another top seller!
When I was a kid growing up in the Chicago suburbs we had two choices for shopping for clothes; Sears and Monkey Wards.
We lost our Sears several years ago. When they closed they discounted their gardening equipment drastically. Bought $500 worth for $100. Since tore down that section of the mall and rebuilt. Bought lots of BB bats for autographs in the 80's and 90s. Saw an active Sears appliance store in Southern Kentucky a couple of years ago.
And yet when everyone was moving to the online version of Sears, they were busy "diversifying" into financial services, real estate and credit cards, and forgot what their business was. Dumbest decline of a company I think I've ever witnessed.
I am sure Sears had a counterpart. JC Penny was the seller who helped get me started coin collecting. They had the "Let's Collect Coins Kit" which included among other things a Redbook (1967), a dozen MS Red 1958-D cents, and a bookelt by Kenneth Bressett. James
Retail is destroying themselves. Some people still want interaction, customer service! In the day when payroll was available to have a full staff of people to offer good customer service was key! Chick Fa Lis… spelled wrong lol, is an example of customer service. Sure it is taught and rehearsed but it’s working. It’s different times for sure but I still think something as simple as customer service is success. Something needs to change for tomorrow because if not, sure we can order online. Will it get delivered? Is it correct? Who do you call? A robot? A sarcastic rep? It was delivered but stolen? Bla bla lol. Regardless of the how, has to be taught and “lived”. Home, school, church and life in general. “Care”! A touch of venting. My opinion of course.
Oh boy! Nap time. Joking of course. I liked Sears. We still have a snowblower from there that's in excellent condition. They also had nice people working there. They closed unfortunately like many others. The problem with retail businesses is the continuous hounding by salespeople at some places and others just have no help or customer service help. Examples are Bob's Furniture and PC Richards and Sons. Very bad customer service.
Sears made the best, strongest, longest-lasting hand tools. When they closed and someone else took up the Craftsman brand, things went downhill. There were Sears houses in our town and my oak Arts-and-Crafts coin desk is from the 1920's catalogue from my grandparents house in the library. Hmmmmm .... it looks like I can't inset a copy of the coin desk filled with Canadian Vicky large cents.
Try downloading and or saving the image and then retry the copy and paste functions. You are getting advice from someone who has failed to crack the imaging posting trick on Collectors Universe for 8 years but still i dare. James
OK, here's another try to post a pic of early Sears 1900's library table, in Arts and Crafts oak, that I use as my coin desk:
I remember many, many trips to Sears when I was a little kid -- pretty sure that's where I first saw Hot Wheels cars, and most likely where my first ones came from. When Mom and Dad retired back to Hagerstown, they built their house just a mile or so from that same store, which had been in that spot since 1958. I'm not sure I ever went back, though, before they relocated to a shopping mall across town in 2003. They abandoned the old building, and it finally got torn down a year or two ago and replaced with a Sheetz.
