Anyone Remember "Two Guys From Harrison"?

I remember them. Cool receipt!

They had a store(s?) in Baltimore, too; although I believe it was called just "Two Guys". They and E. J. Korvette were the big box stores back then. I think that Korvette outlasted Two Guys by a long time, at least in Baltimore.

Hi Jeramiah,

Thanks for this morning's blast from the past.  My Two Guy's was in North Bergan, NJ-A quick bike ride from my house in Jersey City.

In 1965 or 1966 (I was 13 or 14) I stopped in after Christmas and there was 2322 Virginian FM sitting on the shelf in the train department that had been returned because it wouldn't run.  I made an offer on it knowing that my father was good at doing repairs and they took my offer.  I think I paid about $20 for it but swore to my dad I only paid $10 because that is all he would authorize.

I brought the engine home and my father quickly found out that the two motors had been wired wrong so they were pulling/pushing in opposite directions.  A fast rewire and that engine has been running tops ever since.

Thanks for the good memory!

LionelFlyer

They had stores on Long Island too.

Cool find.

Just the other day we drove by the former location of Two Guys in Langhorne PA. I reminded my wife again how my brother and I rode our bicycles there, 5 miles each way on a hot summer day. It's a wonderful memory: looking over the boxes in the train aisle and making a decision of how to spend those allowance dollars.

John

Up until first grade we lived in Kearny; all of my cousins did as well, and my dad worked in Kearny his whole adult life. We were right near the ORIGINAL Two Guys from Harrison as Kearny is right next door to Harrison! I am willing to bet that many of my older brother's train stuff came from there. I wonder if I can find a receipt in his boxes!

Mikki

I think there was a Two Guys in the Blue Star Shopping Center on Route 22 in NJ.  Don't remember the town - possibly around N Plainfield, Springfield or Union. 

There was another thread on this  https://ogrforum.com/...o-guys-from-harrison

We had one just north of Allentown,PA for many years. I remember buying a few Lionel items there. They are long gone from here.

Chris

LVHR

Great memories.

As previously mentioned, Two Guys was one of the first big-box stores. They sold Lionel trains, but only at Christmas time. On the day after Christmas, there was a half-price sale on all trains.

"Two Guys from Harrison" was actually a more polite version of Two *******s from Harrison. The company was founded by two brothers, and their first store was in Harrison, N.J. Their competitors couldn't match their prices and complained about "those two *******s from Harrison." At first, all they sold was scratch-and-dent TVs from a nearby RCA plant, but they soon expanded their inventory into pretty much everything.

@Bill Sherry posted:

I think there was a Two Guys in the Blue Star Shopping Center on Route 22 in NJ.  Don't remember the town - possibly around N Plainfield, Springfield or Union.

Watchung!

You are so correct !  Thank you.

I also went to the "Two Guys" in North Bergen-but also to one on Route 23 in ?Wayne or ?Mountainview. About 1 year or so ago, I purchased on eBay a Lionel 206 Coal Bag-looked to be from the 50s and quite real-which has printed on it ( in addition to usual printing) "Two Guys from Harrison". I asked whether anybody on the Forum had knowledge about whether Lionel did this for Two Guys-but nobody seemed to know. Perhaps now there is an expert out there. This is exactly why train collecting is so interesting, and this Forum is so helpful. Thanks, Paul Hering Lombard, IL  PS Another old timers fact-my father was a policeman in Union City ( NJ of course)-they purchased their pistols from a Toblers Gun Store which was on 32nd St near Bergenline Ave- that store carried Lionel trains during the holidays-and that is where I got my first ( and many more) trains from. None of that exists anymore and I have not be back there in years.

Turtle7

My dad was a Jersey City firefighter and knew a LOT of the policemen in the area.  He mostly purchased trains from Uneeda Appliances, which I think was at the intersection of Newark Ave. and Hudson County (way before it was Kennedy) Blvd.

Of coarse route22 in NJ.

Headquartered on Alps Road in Totowa.

Two Guys had the Lionel Department and a huge eye level train level that brought in hundreds if not thousands of people out for the Christmas season.

A fantastic department store that sold a lot of quality items.  Their camera department stocked Nikon SLRs.   What they didn't have in cleanliness they had in depth of stock.

Retail is lost because master merchandisers like Sidney and Herbert Hubschman (Two Guys), Max Hess and Al Boscov are no more.

There was one in Buffalo, NY, that I went to a couple times when I was a kid.

The last one I saw standing, was in Rockaway, NJ before it was torn down for the new Shoprite.

Two Guys had their own switch and siding at a warehouse in Garfield NJ, on the old Erie Bergen County Line. Some of the tracks were still there in the woods…in Hobert Park…

Tom

@Krieglok posted:

The last one I saw standing, was in Rockaway, NJ before it was torn down for the new Shoprite.

I had forgotten about the Two Guys on Route 46 in Rockaway. Ironically, that location was only a mile up the road from Rockaway Sales, another early big-box store.

The Two Guys I patronized was on Route 10 in East Hanover. I think it's a Marshall's now.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s in the Jersey City-North Bergen area the nickname for the Two Guys Store was "Two Jerks".  (It was typical of the noo-jurzee sarcastic humor I overheard as a child, but didn't understand back then!)

Mitchell's hobby shop in Delaware was in an old Two Guys store.

Purchased #736 Berkshire, no tender, in 1962 at Harrison , N.J store for $12.95.  Still have it in original box and shipping carton with price written on it.  Loco and tender purchased for $5.00 still run beautifully.  My favorite post war piece.

Yep, bought HO gear there many moons ago. Southeast PA.

Shopped the Camden store after Christmas and shoveling snow all fall . Got major discounts for the display items and still have them in running condition.

19204X was an uncatalogued Lionel promotional set from 1962

Well guys, I just had to join this post.  I am nearly 80 now and I KNOW that many of my Lionel trains from the 1950's came from 2-Guys.  We lived in North Arlington, right adjacent to Kearny and my Dad worked at Worthington Corp in Harrison.  So we shopped for trains at the ORIGINAL 2- Guys located in Harrison, NJ.  They were one of the original retailer's who fought against the "fair trade" pricing that kept Lionel stuff (and lots of other stuff) expensive.

What a great memory.

Don

@Don McErlean posted:

Well guys, I just had to join this post.  I am nearly 80 now and I KNOW that many of my Lionel trains from the 1950's came from 2-Guys.  

They were one of the original retailer's who fought against the "fair trade" pricing that kept Lionel stuff (and lots of other stuff) expensive.

What a great memory.

Don

I remember fair trade too, Don.  At one time, fair trade leveled the playing field so that small town merchants could not be undersold by big city stores, and that was probably responsible for a lot of "Main Street" merchants being able to stay open.  But, times changed as people became more mobile, and the fair trade items no longer needed protection.

Other fair trade brands I remember were Levis and Fender Electric Instruments.  A Precision Bass was $210 whether you bought it from your local music store or one of the huge city music stores.

https://pleasantfamilyshopping...ale-of-two-guys.html

Yep, there was a Two Guys in Glen Burnie, MD, and as a kid we'd drive all the way up from Cambridge on the Eastern Shore to shop there for large items. There's a detailed Wikipedia article on them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Guys

I remember E.J. Korvette as well. As a kid I was told the name referred to the founders -- "Eight Jewish Korean Veterans" -- but the Wikipedia article calls that an urban legend, in part because it was founded two years *before* the Korean War!

@Don McErlean posted:

Well guys, I just had to join this post.  I am nearly 80 now and I KNOW that many of my Lionel trains from the 1950's came from 2-Guys.  We lived in North Arlington, right adjacent to Kearny and my Dad worked at Worthington Corp in Harrison.  So we shopped for trains at the ORIGINAL 2- Guys located in Harrison, NJ.  They were one of the original retailer's who fought against the "fair trade" pricing that kept Lionel stuff (and lots of other stuff) expensive.

What a great memory.

Don

Two Guys also fought against Pennsylvania's "Blue Laws" that prohibited sale of nonessential items on Sunday.  

Does anyone know/remember what Madison Hardware's hours were?

Many businesses in NY/North Jersey are closed from Friday 5pm for the Sabbath. 

The first two Lionel train sets I received from Santa, in the early fifties, came from the Harrison store. My Mom worked for RCA on the night shift making vacuum tubes, so my Dad, my sister, and I would sometimes visit what was then their only store to burn time prior to picking up my Mom. There was also a small store in Neptune, NJ, on rt 35, down the shore in the 60’s and a larger store in Brick, NJ. the trains came out at Thanksgiving and were discounted after Christmas until gone. The corporation that bought Two Guys, Vornado, still exists as a real estate entity.

I remember the store in Rockaway NJ on Rt46 and right down the street was a store called Rockaway Sales both sold Lionel trains at Christmas time. When you are a kid those places are where you wanted to go at Christmas.

@Bill Sherry posted:

I think there was a Two Guys in the Blue Star Shopping Center on Route 22 in NJ.  Don't remember the town - possibly around N Plainfield, Springfield or Union.

Blue star is in watchung. 

I remember the store in jersey city on rt 440.  Used to have a Christmas train layout. Got to look but never had the money to buy.

@poconotrain posted:

I remember the store in Rockaway NJ on Rt46 and right down the street was a store called Rockaway Sales both sold Lionel trains at Christmas time. When you are a kid those places are where you wanted to go at Christmas.

I remember Rockaway Sales, but I don't remember Lionel trains there. Did they stock them only at Christmas time? Did they have a big selection?

I remember right after Christmas they would blow out the train stuff.  HO and Lionel.  After I got married my wife and I would go there once a month to go grocery shopping.   We lived in Brooklyn but drove there because of the low prices.  I think we went there until around 1975.  I think it was the store on Rt 22