Sears Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

[leolinden]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/15/business/sears-bankruptcy/index.html

 

Doesn't mean they're liquidating the entire company yet, but this is looking like a Toys R Us situation. 

 

[Starbuck66]

I think everyone knew this was coming. Seemed like the stores felt old and tired, and their website was a freaking mess. They still have good brands and products, but they need to market them better to get successful again. I don’t think they ever made the leap to the 21st century.

[TrekMD]

Not a surprising move.  I guess we'll see what happens to them eventually.

[RickR]

Best Sears memory:

I purchased my first Atari computer bundle at a Sears here in Portland.  Must have been 1984.  800XL with a disk drive and printer for $350.  I can clearly remember every moment of that transaction.  The excitement of finding the clearance bundle.  Picking out the set whose boxes looked to be in the best condition...the sales guy writing it up. 

My family still shops at Sears for clothes and stuff.  We LOVE the Land's End section, although that's leased out to them as far as I know.  It is truly a sad thing to see them go bankrupt.  But yeah, as others have mentioned, their on-line presence is horrible.  Just a jumbled mess. 

On the bright side, they out-lived Montgomery Wards by a good 20 years, and I don't think anyone could have expected that. 

[Starbuck66]

I bought two different Atari games at Sears in the late 80’s: a silver label Space Invaders and Skateboardin. It was one of the few places I could still find 2600 games.

[CrossBow]

Interestingly, I don't recall ever buying any games from Sears bitd. I bought most of my Atari games from Service Merchandise and Toys R Us. Although I do remember buying Ms. Pac-man, Sneak N Peak, Space Jockey, and maybe one other game back in like '83/'84 from the TG&Y that we had near us back then. 

 

Otherwise most of my games were purchased from Service Merchandise and TRU as I said before. Or...pawn shops as I found a pawn shop only about a mile from my house I could get to easily in the mid to late 80s that had tons of 2600 games for a $1 each back then. That was how the bulk of my collection came about on the 2600 side to be honest. 

 

But what I do remember about Sears, is that I bought my first Laserdisc player from them and Laserdiscs in '93. The last major purchase I made at a Sears was back in like 2010 when I bought my sons each a small Toshiba flatpanel TV to use in their rooms at their Mom's for their game consoles they had back then. (Wii and Xbox 360 I believe).

 

The last remaining Sears here in Fantasia is on that list of closings. So it looks just like Radio Shack, there will no longer be any Sears presence in Oklahoma.

[Atari 5200 Guy]

Our local Sears left town before Summer. It was basically a small outlet that sold appliances, tools, and some electronics. Still it felt stuck in the 1970s. It didn't have retail space for clothes and wasn't part of a huge mall. It was part of a small shopping center. Dollar General is the anchor on one end.

 

Memories? Only one. I got my Saturn, PlayStation, and N64 from Sears. I was young, had a good job at the time, and lived with my Grandmother. I had enough cash saved for two of the systems but my plan was to pick one and use the rest to buy a few games. I had tried all three out at Game X Change but they didn't have any new systems...just used with like new prices.

 

For some strange reason the sales rep suggested trying to open a charge account. And this is where it gets really strange. I always paid cash for everything. If I didn't have it then I simply didn't need it. I'm still that way. So I basically had no credit. I don't know what that sales rep did but I ended up with a large charge account. I paid cash for one system, charged the other two along with two games per system, then stopped off at Golden Corral before making the 2 hour drive back home. I got Mom something for her birthday as well. Yea...huge mistake. Took me about two years to pay that stuff off.

 

But, yea, the three systems during the mid-late 1990s I got all at once. Once I tried them out I played Saturn and N64 more than I did PlayStation...mostly because I didn't know I had to have a stupid memory card to save my games. It also took me a while to return to the PlayStation after believing I was brave by turning out the lights and playing Resident Evil in the dark with nothing but the glow of a 24" CRT and 5-channel surround. That lasted a whole ten minutes before I switched it off and went back to Panzer Dragoon.

[dauber]

I live in Chicago, where Sears was started and for decades was its home base. It's just...weird...knowing that this city no longer has a Sears.

 

My school uniform clothes usually came from Sears. Typical predictable Catholic school stuff: navy blue pants, light blue collared shirt, optional navy blue sweater. I remember when we lived in Bourbonnais, IL, the school handbook actually said, "...which can be purchased at Donna's Young Towne." My mother said: "I'll buy my kid's clothes anywhere I damn well want!" It was usually Sears. Toughskins, of course.

 

I remember one day while shopping at the Orland Square Mall, I wanted to get volume 2 of the Beat Street soundtrack. I was ten years old. I asked my brother if he could spot me a few dollars because Record Bar was asking for more than what I had on me. But then when I was in Sears, I saw it for dirt freakin' cheap. Bought it there without having to borrow a cent. (Still have it in my collection, too!)

 

Speaking of Orland Square...the mall my family and I went to regularly was Lincoln Mall in Matteson, IL. (In Bourbonnais we didn't have a mall, so once a month we'd take a half-hour drive to Lincoln Mall.) it was kind of a tradition that my dad and I would split a box of popcorn from the Karmelkorn store. Well, we eventually would go to Orland Square semi-regularly, but they didn't have a Karmelkorn. So my dad and I would get popcorn from the Sears candy department instead.

 

None of my Atari stuff came from Sears. (Didn't have any Telegames-branded products growing up!) But during my Commodore 64 days in the early '90s, I went to the Sears store at the local mall (in 1986 we moved somewhere MUCH better, and in fact where there were TWO malls in town!) and bought a five-pack of software that included Paperboy, Road Runner, Gauntlet, and Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom.