The Backstory: Shocking Items from the Sears Catalog
Elvis Duran and the Morning Show ON DEMAND
Elvis Duran Podcast Network and iHeartPodcasts
4.7 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 1 May 2026
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Even if we don’t love it, most of us rely on Amazon for a lot of our basic shopping needs. But 140 years ago, the Victorian version of Amazon arrived on the scene. The Sears catalog was just as huge as Amazon, at one point reaching 2/3rds of all Americans and accounting for 1% of the entire U.S. economy. They sold and delivered everything... even heroin!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So do you love shopping? Maybe you enjoy it sometimes, but not always when it involves a trip to the |
| 0:05.5 | store when you're already busy. Well, lately, a lot of our basic household needs involve |
| 0:10.4 | browsing Amazon or Target or Walmart or even Costco and clicking. But almost 140 years ago, |
| 0:17.7 | folks got the same shopping thrill when a brand new service opened up. I'm Patty Steele. |
| 0:23.2 | The catalog that had |
| 0:24.5 | everything you needed, from clothes to |
| 0:26.6 | baby chickens, to gravestones, |
| 0:28.9 | even heroin. That's next |
| 0:30.7 | on the backstory. |
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