When I was a wee Lampsen, few publications were more anticipated than the annual Sears Christmas catalog.   Page after page of glossy plastic toys shared space with photos of people in plain white underwear striking poses.  We salivated over the toys, laughed at the underwear models and marveled at how many different tools one could order for his father.

The photo attached to this post is from a Sears catalog, circa 1976.  I had a nifty little Star Trek Enterprise playset just like the one in picture and it probably came from Sears.  

It’s also possible that my mom used a coupon to save a few bucks on Kirk and the Gang.  Though not a penny-pincher, Mama Lampsen believed in bargain shopping.  

Today, no one gets excited at the idea of Christmas catalog.  They buy online.  And if they’re interested in shaving a few bucks they don’t grab the scissors to remove a Sears coupon from the paper, they use a Sears coupon code at the department store’s website.

Although coupon codes (entered at checkout from Sears’ site) are the most common way to cut a little off your bill, Sears does occasionally kick it old-school with paper coupons.  Check your reliable Sunday circular for those.  If you get a paper coupon from Sears in the mail, read the fine print.  At least one person has found that their coupons are laden with some rather annoying conditions.

Sears coupon codes are easy to find.  A simple Google search will quickly put you in touch with codes for all sorts of products.  The savings are usually substantial enough to warrant attention, though they’re rarely the kind of thing that’s going to make a massive dent in your spending.  RetailMeNot, DealsPlus, and Dealigg all seem to have nice assortments of Sears codes.

There’s also a hybrid of sorts.  Sears will issue printable coupons online.  Sears Hardware, for instance, was actually giving away free padlocks to those who took the time to print their coupon.  

The text across the top of that coupon should give you a good hint about how to get the best deals from the venerable department store and catalog seller.  It says, “Special Savings for Sears Hardware E-Mail Subscribers Only”.  One can deduce from that headline that they might want to consider heading over to Sears’ website and putting their name on the mailing list in order to get coupon offers.

As is so often the case, it seems, retailers are far happier to hand out news about good deals to their subscriber and past customer base than they are to those who just happen to wake up one morning with the desire to visit the Sears website in search of a new socket set.  Get on the list, get the better deals.

I miss the Sears Christmas catalog and memories those little glossy plastic toys that never lived up to expectations make me smile.  I still think the weird pictures of guys carefully posed in phony snow wearing a-frames and tidy whities are weird, too.  

All things considered, though, we’re probably better off today than we were back then.  We can access the full Sears inventory any day of the week and ordering is merely a matter of an Internet connection and a few mouseclicks.  To make things even more attractive, we can carve a little off our Sears bills by using some of the readily available Sears coupons and coupon codes out there.