From the Sears catalog...

[donnie]

Check out these portable radio headphones.

[Kitty]

Those are cool! I rock down the street with these, so I guess I'm not much groovier than they are!

[donnie]

I think you're definitely groovier with those on, and probably considerably less conspicuous.

[donnie]

Sears sold gasoline-powered kitchen stoves at one point. Yikes! Having gasoline in regular close proximity to a stove sounds like a really bad idea. And these things apparently operated on gasoline vapor, which is even worse.

Sears goes to lengths to assure customers that there is no danger of explosion with the stoves they sell (unless you happen to use the wrong grade of gasoline ). I guess the tanks located up above the stove are to try to put some distance between the gas and the burners. It doesn't make me feel much better.

This is from the 1903 catalogue.

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[donnie]

From the 1902 catalogue: I was surprised to see Ouija boards this far back. (I checked Wikipedia, which says they originated in the 1890s.)

[donnie]

Another screenshot from the games section of the 1902 catalogue. Quite a selection of dice.

I wonder why they were sold in sets of five. Aren't dice normally used in pairs?

And does anyone have any idea what in the world the use would be for dice with no spots?

[Kitty]

Now this one is really interesting to me, and it led me to research. (Shocking, I know!)

I wonder why they were sold in sets of five. Aren't dice normally used in pairs?

Originally I thought maybe Yahtzee, but apparently that game hadn't been invented yet. So I learned....

Dice back then was usually associated with gambling, and they would use 5 die in games such as Klondike and 5 roll. I've never been someone to use dice for gambling, so I don't know anything about these games.

And does anyone have any idea what in the world the use would be for dice with no spots?

My first thought was custom dice, and it looks like my assumption was right. You could make your own markings instead of looking for a specific kind of dice for the type of game you're playing.

[donnie]

Ah, I see. Thanks for the info!

In the games that used five dice, It seems like you would spend most of the game time counting.