We bought our banjo,full kitchen and Dad's 16 ga. Browning from our Sears in Rockland,Maine.
You used to be able to buy boxed salt-dried cod from the catalogue and they also offered Gibson prewar style banjos.

Wow, really interesting. That brought back a memory for me. Sometime in the very distant past I actually had a Sears catalogue here in New Zealand. I can't remember where I got it. Maybe I ordered from Sears or perhaps borrowed it from someone. It was great to look through it. We never had anything like that here.

Steve,
When I was a kid I had a Browning automatic "Sweet 16" with a poly-choke.
I was some proud of that gun, I tell ya.
I didn't get it from Sears, but from Bailey's Hardware and Sporting Goods in Bath, which my dad owned for a number of years in the late 50s and into the mid 60s, after we moved from S.W. Harbor.
My brothers and I took full advantage of the inventory!

My Dad paid $150 in 1951 for his standard 16,Tim.
Did your "Sweet" have gold plated engraving?
You must have got a good discount with ownership of the store.

I hate to be the one to tell you this Steve, but I think your dad got ripped off.  They were listed for $115.70 in 1951.

 

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Originally posted by steve davis

We bought our banjo,full kitchen and Dad's 16 ga. Browning from our Sears in Rockland,Maine.
You used to be able to buy boxed salt-dried cod from the catalogue and they also offered Gibson prewar style banjos.

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Every issue of the S&R catalog has been scanned and is available online.  No issue offered a Gibson prewar style banjo.  On the other hand, Montgomery Ward did offer private label banjos that were made by Gibson. 

No gold-plated engraving on mine, Steve. It came off the trade-in rack.
My brothers and I lavished a lot of care on our various weapons, making liberal use of Hoppe's #9 gun oil. A few years ago I was in a Dick's Sporting Goods and carefully opened a bottle of Hoppe's to take a Proustian sniff that I hoped would bring back memories of days gone by, but they evidently changed the formula, because it didn't smell the same at all.

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Originally posted by Joel Hooks

quote:

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Originally posted by steve davis

We bought our banjo,full kitchen and Dad's 16 ga. Browning from our Sears in Rockland,Maine.
You used to be able to buy boxed salt-dried cod from the catalogue and they also offered Gibson prewar style banjos.

---

Every issue of the S&R catalog has been scanned and is available online.  No issue offered a Gibson prewar style banjo.  On the other hand, Montgomery Ward did offer private label banjos that were made by Gibson. 

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Montgomery Ward and Sears offered the Recording King and Studio King banjos.

I believe they were all archtops and maybe no truss rods (not sure about that).

Concerning what Dad paid for his Sears Browning that was a long time ago.I can see me replacing his 115 for 150 all these years later.

Sam Tidwell had one of those banjos.I believe this was discussed as I describe it in old issues of Banjo Newsletter.

After looking things up it turns out my old BNL info has since been updated removing any Sears connection and saying both brands (Studio and Recording King came exclusively from Montgomery Ward.

Thanks for making me revisit that old information,Joel.

I can't place an exact example, but I remember on more than one occasion watching a western and hearing "ordered from Sears and Roebuck."

The problem with that statement is that there was no S&R as we think of it before 1894. Company promotional material will strongly imply that Sears & Roebuck started in 1886/1887. But the famous S&R catalog of general merchandise did not exist before 1894. This anachronism always breaks the moment for me during a western.

Sadly, this general "ordered from Sears and Roebuck" has spilled over to "living historians" (gunfighter reenactors) who for some reason will argue when called out about it.

The days of vague claims are rapidly ending. Just the other week someone on a living history clothing group claimed that they saw multiple pages of leather cowboy cuffs advertised in a mid 1880s S&R catalog. This got my attention so I asked for more specifics, as there was no mid 1880s catalog. Then they wrote "could have been mid 1890s"-- alas no such pages of cuffs were listed in any of the catalogs from 1894 to 1900.

Since all the S&R catalogs have been digitized (except for just a couple issues), when someone says "it was sold by Sears", I'm gonna look it up.

I have seen enough examples of marked banjos to know that the catalog images and descriptions were pretty darn accurate.