The Big Watch and Spectacle Fire Sale
After a brush with insolvency, a Seattle merchant pivots to an aggressive clearing-out sale of watches and musical instruments.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Due to the late unpleasantness with our creditors, we have, by making a showing of available assets exceeding our liabilities of over $40,000, been able to re-establish confidence in their kind but timorous hearts to allow us to sell our own stock, which we propose to do. Every article will be marked at from 10 to 30 percent below cost in plain figures, so that all can see at a glance through our windows and show cases the cost. Buyers will thus be able to see that this is a genuine liquidation sale, and made for the purpose of closing business. To country merchants we will offer goods—clocks, watches and jewelry—at prices that they can’t get elsewhere. Don’t buy a dollar’s worth until you first see our stock. Sheet music at 50 percent discount. We are agents for the Weber and Emerson Pianos and Palace, Estey and Mason & Hamlin organs, and we have a large stock on hand, which we are offering at manufacturers’ prices. Don’t buy a piano or organ until you get our prices. [Signed] Krum & Co., in Frye’s Opera House block; sign of the Big Watch and Spectacle.
“Due to the late unpleasantness with our creditors, we have... been able to re-establish confidence in their kind but timorous hearts to allow us to sell our own stock.”
This 1885 liquidation notice from the Frye's Opera House block captures the high-stakes, precarious nature of Gilded Age retail in a young Seattle. Today, the location near the waterfront remains a hub for commerce, but the 'Big Watch and Spectacle' sign is long gone, replaced by the digital landscape of modern consumer electronics.
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