Today's marketplace is one of instant gratification. The aspiring shopper can go online, place an order, be billed immediately, and receive their anime DVDs the very next day. In olden days, the shopper would have to wait for a catalog to arrive, fill out an order form, and then mail it in along with payment to a company far away. Weeks later the package would arrive, but it would not be anime. It would be a thrashing apparatus used to harvest wheat, or some kind of terrifying medical instrument designed to cure a painful uterine prolapse. To put in bluntly, the world of old was a festering cesspool and the people that lived in it were devoured whole by its evil.

Thankfully progress has given us anime and our uteruses are not constantly falling out anymore. We can go to stores and buy useless items or we can order them online with ease. Still, to better understand how we got here, it's worth looking at how we did things in the past. With that said, I'd like to share another page I found from my family's old mail order catalog series. The Boruff & Davies Catalogue Co. was a staple of American shopping for several decades, and a vital lifeline for the rural American.


– Josh "Livestock" Boruff (@Livestock)

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