I continue my efforts to put every photo from the CompStoreVisuals account from Cohost (and then eventually the Twitter archive and Mastodon) on my site so there will be a longer lasting home for them. For whatever reason, this one will have more of a Christmas theme to theme. It must have been that time of year when I started posting these pics but I guess it kinda fits in now too.

Not sure where I originally grabbed this one. It has appeared in a few places on the internet and now there’s one more place!

Sierra On-Line’s Christmas cards, designed to play on computers in stores

1992 CompUSA Christmas commercial

The Internet Archive has a few pages from a Christmas catalog for Egghead Software from 1990, however my Cohost account says 1991 so maybe someone corrected me based on the games featured? Or I’m just wrong there.

Here’s an article from a news report from the video game department of a Sears in 1982. Includes shots of Atari computers.
https://retroist.com/a-1982-video-visit-to-the-video-game-department-of-sears/
But you know what’s no longer here? The actual footage! Something that’s been incredibly frustrating and sad about maintaining these accounts and posting photos is that I’ve only been doing it for a couple of years and so much disappears! Not just actual stores closing, since it’s a dying form of commerce, but all the sites and videos that will suddenly disappear overnight. Sometimes my goofy accounts are the only places that have preserved photos, which is why I keep reposting them since Cohost and Twitter have both basically died in the last couple years as well. People like to say that things last forever on the internet but they really don’t! I’ve saved a few videos from my time doing this but not this one. If you can find it, please let me know so I can link to it here.

Scans of an article about a computer auction, taken from the July 7, 1990 issue of New Computer Express on the Internet Archive

https://archive.org/details/NH2021_New_Computer_Express_Issue087.pdf/mode/2up

The Used Computer Store Berkeley, California

I’m running out of time before Cohost completely shuts down, so here’s another big batch of pictures from the CompStoreVisuals. I guess I do have the archive of the account so they aren’t gone gone even after the site shuts down, but it’s still a good excuse to repost them to somewhere more permanent.

These aren’t really sorted in any order and I’d like to resume posting photos of computer stores at some point, I just have to make time to find more. Some of it is nostalgia but I’m also just fascinated by forms of retail that don’t exist anymore. I walked through a mall last weekend and while it was very busy (there’s another nearby that’s struggling), it was still weird to walk through Macy’s and think about how department stores like that and Sears were just things people went to all the time for everything instead of online. The unfortunate thing about being into a thing that barely exists is that it just gets harder to find stuff, especially with search engines getting worse. The big reason why I’m doing these reposts is because a lot of it just doesn’t seem to exist on the web anymore outside of the account, or it does and I just can’t find it.

Photo of a Compaq Works store in Houston from the book Retail and Restaurant Spaces: An International Portfolio of 41 Designers (1999). I believe I got this one from checking out a book on the Internet Archive. Even if you aren’t into this extremely specific subject, it’s fascinating to look at old books covering retail and restaurants in general and seeing the trends in design.

CompUSA
Honolulu, Hawaii
2006

Forgot where I found this but I believe it was from a Black Friday sale

1988 Egghead Software Catalog.

Originally posted by Foone on Twitter
https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1010067430096269314

Found a couple of ads from the 80s for a computer store near me that used to exist called Micro Station in Southfield, Michigan. Never went to it but thought they were still fun to look at.

From a 1983 issue of the Westland Observor (link opens a PDF)

From the 02/14/83 issue of the Livonia Observer