The Day After Christmas

I did the same at the"Boston Store" in Wilkes-Barre, PA for the exact same type after Christmas sale. I learned to negotiate by having cash and making deals. I was about twelve years old. Dad a/k/a Santa supplied trains for Christmas for years prior, as well. My son has the train gene and the torch is passed, even though the stores don't sell trains the way they used to.

Mark

We have a Five-Guys here.  The reason it is called Five-Guys is because that is how many people it takes to finish their bag of fries.

 Two Guys on the city line in Queens would have the same sale. Problem was the adults would push the kids out of the way when the doors opened. You could not get down the aisle. My younger brother and myself would go around to the next aisle . There my brother would climb up the shelves to the top and throw down trains from the next aisle. It was the only way us kids would get anything. And I still have the trains !

Fifty percent off everything?! Now that's a sale. Not like many of the so-called sales I see with with one condition after another listed in the fine print.

Must have been so exciting.

We had a Two Guys in Rochester, NY where I grew up.  That store had a year-round hobby department and was my source for trains.  I was more into HO as a kid.  I still have the AHM 0-8-0 I received one Christmas over 40 years ago

Two Guys on the city line in Queens would have the same sale. Problem was the adults would push the kids out of the way when the doors opened. You could not get down the aisle. 

That sounds very familiar! Remember that in those days before Black Friday, December 26th was the busiest shopping day of the year with people returning Christmas presents and with the after-Christmas sales.

My problem was that this was the early '60s, and I was a dumb kid. I bought all the stuff that exploded or launched missiles, helicopters or satellites when I should have been buying all the nice engines and freight cars that were selling for a song.

Two Guys in Western NY had a sale just like that. It was like a mad house! However, I remember mostly HO trains. My mother would race to the train aisle, push as much as she could into a cart, then we would go to another department and sort through the stuff to keep what we wanted. I think we did that for two years before they closed. Had to be in the 1976-1980 time frame.

While we had TwoGuys in my area and likewise enjoyed their 50% off post Christmas sales, I remember that area Woolworths,  years later renamed Woolco, had similar post Christmas train clearance event sales though HO scale trains from the manufacturer, AHM. Also having such sales was a department store chain called E.J. Korvettes, and the small S.E. Pa. regional chain of Pomeroy Dept. stores. Those most certainly were the "golden" days for us kids who were into HO trains. In fact, I still have many of those engines I bought back then.

In the 1970s, I could find model trains in Korvettes in Brooklyn and in Woolworths and Kmart in Minnesota. Plus, there was a large specialty store called Craft Village in Rochester, Minn., that stocked a generous selection of HO trains.

Except for this particular Kmart (ironically, which is still hanging on somehow), all those stores I visited are now gone. Makes me kinda sad.

I never made it to Two Guys, but I remember the TV commercials and newspaper ads at Christmas time. I wish my family had gone there once, but we never did.

You guys were lucky.  The primary Lionel source in our small town was a department store that sold Lionel trains in their Christmas toyland every year.  But after Christmas, the toyland was dismantled and the trains put in storage until the next season.  Nothing ever went on sale.

I still have a Lionel Pennsylvania porthole caboose with the Two Guys sticker on it. I think we got it in  Paramus. It was the 1975 version got it for $4.98!!! Then later I would go to Train World on Ave M after Two Guys stopped carrying trains. Also, there was a store here in NY called Masters, they also discounted trains after Christmas. There was one near White Plains on 9A in Elmsford.