fascinating 1897 Sears catalog

A recent auction adventure yielded some very old and very interesting books and one of them is this old 1897 Sears Catalogue reprinted in 1967.  Sears was only four years old at that time when the catalog was issued and it's a bulky volume of fascinating trove for Americana enthusiast. 

It's so fascinating to find the things that people actually sold and bought in the late 19th century and more so is how inexpensive everything was.   From 15 cents bonnet to 40 cents corsets, to  50 cents parasols and 56 cents butter churn. 

Here's a few scans that caught my eye, you can click on the image to view them larger.

**I understand I've overused the word "fascinating" in this post but I don't have any other word to aptly describe the book.