TRAIN SETS SOLD BY SEARS AND ROEBUCK AND COMPANY by WarrenKennedy Sears catalogues have existed since 1888 when Richard W. Sears printed his first brochure describing the merchandise carried by his new company called the Sears Watch Company. He later hired Alva Roebuck to work as a watch repairman. In 1893 they incorporated and formed the “Sears and Roebuck Company.” They expanded beyond watches at this point and carried anything they could make a buck on. By 1896 their gross sales were $700,000 and by 1900 they did ten million dollars in sales. As Sears grew so did their catalogue, which became known as “The Wish Book”. A family living on a farm could now purchase almost everything they needed by mail. The Parcel Post system came into being in 1913 so families had their purchases delivered to their doorstep instead of having to travel to the nearest train station. In 1933 Sears published their first “Christmas Wish Book”. This book had many pages of toys and frequently two pages of trains and layout accessories. The earliest Sears catalogues had trains from such companies as Ives, Bing [a German company], Joy Line, Hafner, Buddy “L” and Lionel. The catalogue tended to carry only the lower end train sets by these companies. If you compare say the items in a Lionel catalogue from the thirties to the Lionel items in the Sears catalogue it consists of mostly cheap wind up sets and the cheapest O and 0-27 Sets. Keep in mind that Sears had survived the depression by trying to keep prices as low as possible. Joy Line trains went bankrupt during the depression and was taken over by Marx Company. Ives sold out to Lionel and American Flyer in 1928-29. Bing was forced by the Nazis to leave Germany in 1938 as he was Jewish and Americans refused to buy German goods for patriotic reasons so there were no more German trains in the Sears catalogs. A Marx train would sell for one to four dollars while the Lionel sets would be ten or twelve dollars in the 1930s era Sears catalogs. Hafner Company was not mentioned by name but manufactured only low end wind up trains which did show up in the Sears catalog. The Sears catalog did not use the manufacture’s catalogue numbers but instead used their own numbering system. The Sears catalogue would say for instance: “A Deluxe Lionel Steam Engine with Pullman cars” as opposed to The Lionel catalogue which would call the same set, for example: “A Lionel O gauge 264E locomotive, 261T tender and 2 603 coaches and a 604 observation car.” Sometimes the illustrations in the Sears catalog made it difficult to tell what actually composed the sets. 1n 1937 Sears switched from artists renderings to actual photographs with Lionel getting a page of their own and Marx had two pages. This made identification of the various trains much easier. See Photo #1 for an example label of a Lionel set produced for Sears Starting around 1933 Lionel produced one “Special Set” for the Sears catalog each year that contained something not available anywhere else. It could be one less car, a different color, or different features or substituting cars so regular train dealers could not complain about being under cut on an identical item. There are uncatalogued sets in existence which are not to be found in either the Lionel or the Sears catalogue and yet

were sold only by Sears. I have included a few photos of uncatalogued sets, some of which are rather common and others you will rarely see. Sears obviously sold a lot of trains as some of the ‘Sears only” sets are more common today than the equivalent Lionel catalogued set. The price guides give a higher value to the black 238E engine, available only from Sears, than the gunmetal catalogued version of the same engine. One sees more black 238s at train meets than gunmetal ones suggesting Sears sold more of these sets than did Lionel. Photo 1

Photos 2, shows the catalogued 238E Gunmetal and the Sears Black 238. Photo 2

Photo 3 shows the Sears 59-79F set from 1940 with the Black 238 Photo3

Photo 4 shows the Catalogued set 187W from the 1938 Lionel catalogue Photo 4

To be able to reduce the price for Sears and other venders Lionel would take a catalogued set and change the numbers, colors and or features. . Photo 5 shows what should be a catalogued set except they removed the journals from the cars and used latch couplers instead of box couplers. Also, the cars are blue with new numbers instead of the red 1690 and 1691 cars found in the catalogued sets. Photo 5 Set # 1069W

Photo 6

1693 Observation car from Set 1069 W in twotone blue and without journals Photo 7 shows Set 7104 in which the tender and passenger cars have no journals, no lights in the cars and latch couplers, whereas the contemporary catalogued version of these cars would have manual or automatic box couplers and be lighted. Photos 8 and 9 show the tender and Pullman lacking journals. Photo 7

. While not having a separate Sears number on the box this set was likely sold to Sears or other retailers at a low price point. Photos 8 and 9 show the missing journals. There are many other sets out there that were specific to one retailer or another. There are at least one passenger set and one freight set with “Firestone Tire and Rubber” on the label where the Sears number is usually found. Many of the Prewar Lionel sets are missing their set box and since they do not conform to any catalogued sets, we are unable to trace their origin. Many of the Ives trains, which Lionel continued to manufacture after Ives was long gone, showed up in Lionel boxes into the late 1930s but were never listed in their catalogues. There are a few sets that were unique to Macys Department Store that I hope to document in a future article. Photo 8

Photo 9

Bibliography Greenberg's guide to Lionel trains, 1901-1942 Dave McEntarfer - Greenberg Books - 1995 Greenberg’s Guide to Sears Train Sets by Keith Wills, edited by Tom Watson 1991