10 Strange Sears Facts From the Catalog Era

There was a time when Sears was not just a store. It was closer to a household utility, something that sat in kitchens, barns, workshops, and outhouses across America. Long before online shopping trained people to expect almost anything at the front door, Sears had already built a version of that world on paper.

Chances are, someone in your family bought something from Sears. Maybe it was a washing machine, a socket wrench, a winter coat, or a Christmas gift picked out from the thick catalog that seemed to contain nearly everything. For much of the 20th century, Sears was not just where Americans shopped. It was where they imagined what their lives could look like next.

The stranger part is how far that went. At different points, Sears sold houses, medicine, military equipment, and even helped accidentally start one of America’s most cheerful holiday traditions. Here are some of the more surprising pieces of Sears history.

1. Sears once sold entire houses by mail

Between 1908 and the early 1940s, Sears sold more than 70,000 kit homes through its Modern Homes program. A buyer could choose a house from the catalog, place an order, and receive the materials by rail. The shipment could include pre-cut lumber, nails, doors, windows, hardware, and a thick instruction book for putting the whole thing together.

The first Sears house catalog in 1908 offered designs priced from about $360 to $2,890. That was not pocket change, but compared with buying or building a house through more traditional means, it made homeownership feel possible for many families.

Many Sears homes are still standing today. Some have been carefully identified by researchers through stamped lumber, shipping labels, blueprints, or matching floor plans. The funny thing is that some of these once mail-order homes now sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on location and condition. They were modest by modern standards, often lacking the insulation, central heating, air conditioning, and finished systems people expect today. Still, there is something humbling about the idea that a solid little house could arrive by train and survive for a century.

2. Sears may have made its catalog smaller so it would sit on top

One old story says Sears printed its catalog slightly smaller than Montgomery Ward’s catalog so that, when families stacked them, the Sears book would naturally end up on top. It is one of those small business tricks that sounds almost too simple, but it fits the mail-order world perfectly.

Back then, visibility mattered in a very physical way. There was no search ranking or sponsored placement. There was just a pile of catalogs in a house, and the one on top had the first chance to be opened.

3. Sears was once one of America’s biggest employers

By the 1970s, Sears had become so large that roughly 1 out of every 204 working Americans was employed by the company. It was also producing hundreds of millions of catalogs a year, making it not only a retail giant but also one of the biggest publishers in the country.

That is hard to picture now, after years of store closures and decline. But for a long stretch of American life, Sears was everywhere. It sold tools, clothes, appliances, tires, toys, farm equipment, and nearly every ordinary thing a family might need.

4. Sears catalogs once sold heroin

Around the turn of the 20th century, Sears sold Bayer Heroin through its catalog. For $1.50, customers could order a small kit that included heroin, a syringe, and needles. At the time, heroin was marketed as a medicine and was used for coughs, breathing problems, and other ailments before its risks became fully understood and regulated.

It feels shocking now, but it also shows how different the medical marketplace once was. The Sears catalog carried many things that would never pass through ordinary retail channels today.

5. People complained when the catalog became worse toilet paper

Before toilet paper became common in every household, old catalogs were often reused in outhouses. Sears catalogs were thick, free, and printed on paper that could serve another purpose after the shopping was done.

According to a long-running bit of American toilet-paper history, complaints came when Sears began printing catalogs on glossy, clay-coated paper in the 1930s. The new pages looked better, but they were much less useful in the outhouse.

It is a very human complaint. Sears probably saw better printing. Some customers saw a ruined bathroom supply.

6. In 1917, Sears offered a Colt machine gun

A 1917 Sears military equipment catalog listed a Colt machine gun chambered for .30-caliber U.S. Government cartridges. The catalog described it as capable of firing more than 400 shots per minute and noted that machine guns were used by police organizations, home guards, and municipalities in case of riots.

The price was $865, a very serious amount of money at the time. It is one of those catalog entries that makes the old mail-order world feel almost unreal. A person could turn a page and move from canteens and belts to a heavy machine gun.

7. Sears accidentally helped create NORAD’s Santa tracker

In 1955, a Sears ad in Colorado Springs invited children to call Santa. The number printed in the ad was wrong. Instead of reaching Santa, children reached the unlisted phone number for the Continental Air Defense Command operations center, NORAD’s predecessor.

Col. Harry Shoup answered the first call and chose not to disappoint the child. His team played along, and the mistake slowly grew into the annual NORAD Tracks Santa tradition. NORAD still tracks Santa every Christmas Eve, which is probably one of the strangest and sweetest things ever born from a typo.

8. The Sears Tower design was linked to a pack of cigarettes

The Sears Tower, now called Willis Tower, was designed by architect Bruce Graham and structural engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Its famous “bundled tube” structure has often been compared to a group of cigarettes standing together in a pack.

The idea was practical, not decorative. By bundling nine structural tubes at different heights, the building could rise higher while resisting wind more efficiently. Still, it is hard not to like the image of one of the world’s most famous skyscrapers being explained with something as ordinary as cigarettes on a table.

9. A teenage Sears clerk invented the quick-release ratchet

Peter Roberts was only 18 and working as a Sears clerk in Massachusetts when he invented a quick-release ratchet wrench. The tool allowed a mechanic to release and change sockets with one hand, a small improvement that turned out to be extremely valuable.

Roberts sold the patent rights to Sears for $10,000. Later, he sued the company, arguing that the invention had been undervalued. During the legal fight, his attorney claimed Sears made $44 million in extra profits connected to the quick-release feature, though Sears disputed the figure.

It is a classic inventor story: one small mechanical idea, a giant company, and a value that only became obvious after the product was already selling.

10. The Sears Tower was once the tallest building in the world

The Sears Tower opened in Chicago in 1973 and became the tallest building in the world, a title it held until the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur were completed in 1998. It remains one of the most recognizable buildings in the United States.

Today, Willis Tower no longer sits at the top of the world ranking, but it still carries the weight of its era. It was built when Sears stood near the height of American retail power. The company wanted a headquarters that looked like dominance, and for a while, that is exactly what it was.