You are probably already aware of several sites which are aiming to scan OLD CATALOGS of SEARS ROEBUCK, JC PENNEY, MONTGOMERY WARD and possibly others, in order to provide FREE ONLINE VIEWING for historical, educational, and just plain fun viewing if you have nothing else to do on a rainy day.
My wife showed me several of the sites a few years ago. She had read magazine articles years ago, and saw it discussed on talk shows years ago that both the tv & film production industry folks and the retail fashion, clothing buyers, for mass merchandising chains were compiling such catalogs on pdf from the mid sixties to the late seventies, just so that they could instantly view certain womens clothing to get ideas based on trends of what influential hollywood stars were seen currently wearing about.
The tv/film production people use the old catalogs for a different reason, simply as a nearest barometer, to guess on what people should be wearing in say 1977 or whatever year the tv series or film is supposed to be set in. Nothing is ever close to entirely accurate as you always get some young dreamer hollywood type that has a revisionist view of what that era-year in question, should appear like.
This one has a bunch of old SEARS ROEBUCK, & JC PENNEY catalogs, and also a few MONTGOMERY WARD catalogs:
317 Vintage Christmas Catalogs & Holiday Wish Books with 283,819 total catalog pages from Sears, Montgomery Ward and JCPenney over the years.
christmas.musetechnical.com
Here is another site with some also:
WishbookWeb Catalog Navigation Clicking on any of the graphical catalog panels below will open up a new window containing the selected catalog navigation screen. Please enjoy the new format and if…
wishbookweb.com
There are several other links that are compiling old such catalog scans on pdf for free viewing that I cannot currently recall, otherwise I would provide the link for those also.
The cool thing about having online pdfs of ancient catalogs is that old bicycle enthusiasts can find the year, year(s) in which it was offered in what color offerings and with what accessories, and for what full retail/catalog price.
Perhaps, the cabe, should consider making such a compilation library of such, or maybe Sticky links to all quality web links with decently scanned & archived relevant large mass merchant retailer catalogs that sold bicycles during the 20th Century.
I do understand that such a sticky thread, or pdf scan archive of such printed catalogs may in the eyes of some, devalue the need to collect & acquire the actual printed document or catalog for their own collection, since it might then be available to be viewed at the click of a button on screen. Yes, there is some validity in that point of view. Completists will still want every piece of archival original paperwork, catalogs, original owners manuals, sales receipts, tags, ....you name it, if it's period paper supporting documents of the bicycles within their collection, they will want to own the originals. That alone probably would see that certain period supporting documents, trade literature, catalogs, etc., would still command at least the same mkt prices as they do now, as demand wouldn't change. Anyway, it is just a suggestion that a greater reference library depository could be built over time than what is currently here on the cabe. There is a tremendous amount that is already here on the cabe but it largely exists somewhat scattered over hundreds of threads through the past. Perhaps a concerted effort (when the relevant info comes up..) to extract & compile such specific relevant scans, links, and such into a single sticky classification heading for reference/educational use.