Men’s coats in seal and China dogskin (curly and otherwise) were listed in the 1908 winter catalog. All Sears’ cast-iron stoves were made in Newark, Ohio.

A year later, he opened a Chicago location for catalog sales and hired a watchmaker, Alvah C. Roebuck. The mail-order watch and jewelry company Sears, Roebuck and Co. was born in 1893.

They are perhaps my only costly vice: my tattered collection includes modern reprints from 1890, 1897, 1900, 1902, 1908, and 1927, plus real catalogs from 1933, 1939, 1946, and 1958, typically ...

Ancestry.com now has the complete collection of Sears, Roebuck and Company catalogs from 1896 to 1993, spring and fall seasons, available for viewing on its website. Comprising more than 250,000 pages ...

Sears, Roebuck put out its first catalog in the 1890’s. You could buy a watch, jewelry and, later on, saddles, sewing machines, silk stockings, even live singing canaries.

But if you turn the dial back a century, the Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog was also a way to order a prefab home. One of these homes, listed at $290,000, just sold in Orma, WV.

Until Sears, Roebuck & Co. - and its competitor, Montgomery Ward & Co. - blanketed the U.S. with catalogs in the late 19th century, Americans had no idea how many things they wanted. Most ...