A Final Sale If You Go
By Knowles, Laura
BACK IN 1999, Paul Brown began moving the E.E. Kready General Merchandise Store piece by piece from Manheim to Lititz. Now, the authentic country store with all of its circa-1957 goods will be moving back to Manheim for a huge auction of more than 1,200 items from the store.
From packaged goods to beer bottles, Coca-Cola machines to animal traps, the sale of Kready’s store will be held at 9 a.m. Saturday, May 31, at the former N.G. Hershey building, 55 Doe Run Road, Manheim.
I had an agreement with Junior (Elias Kready Jr.) that if the contents of Kready’s store were ever sold, it would be brought back to Manheim to be sold, says Brown. I’m living up to my promise.
The May 31 sale will be the first of three auctions held by John M. Hess Auction Service. The first will sell most of the contents of the store, while a second auction in September will feature household items. A third is likely to be held in December for everything else.
John Hess said the auction service located an appropriate site for the Kready auction so that it could be held in Manheim, as Elias Kready Jr. had wanted.
Kready, the son of the store’s original owner, died in August 2001 at the age of 86, after a brief illness. He had been living with Brown, his wife and daughter in an apartment above Kready’s Country Store Museum, 55 N. Water St., Lititz.
As Brown notes, they were Kready’s family and Kready was like their grandfather.
Two years earlier, the Browns and Kready had painstakingly moved the contents of the E.E. Kready General Merchandise Store from its original location at 60 N. Main St., Manheim, to its new home. Brown had purchased each item from the store one at a time from Kready, and in the process, ended up adopting him, too.
The store was set up just as it had been in Manheim, only it was located inside a 21,000-square-foot warehouse that Brown had purchased from Clair Brothers. Brown established Lititz Junction there, which consisted of Kready’s Country Store Museum, a quilt museum, a restaurant and a penny candy shop. Brown was in the process of building a beer and wine bar at the location when the doors suddenly closed in July 2004.
At the time, Brown says, there was the possibility that the Smithsonian Institute might be interested in the Kready General Store and its contents. An announcement of the closing on the museum’s Web site, www.lititzjunction.com, hinted that the Browns had an opportunity to take their museums to a higher level of recognition. That didn’t happen.
Since 2004, Kready’s General Merchandise Store has sat patiently, awaiting its next life.
A lot of people have wondered what was happening with Kready’s and why we closed, admits Brown, adding that his interest in the museum waned after Kready’s death.
He is now pursuing other interests, although he still lives in the apartment above the store with his family. The building is up for sale, valued at $1.9 million. Brown plans to build a new home in Manheim Township once the building sells.
As for the estimated value of the general store museum and its contents, that, says Brown, is anyone’s guess.
The contents of the quilt museum – many of which came from Kready’s mother – have already been sold through Morphy’s Auction near Adamstown, Brown says.
The sale of the E.E. Kready General Merchandise Store Museum contents promises to be a great opportunity for collectors of Manheim and general history items. The store is filled to the brim with paper goods, pet supplies, baby products, shoes and shoe polish, matches, cigars, cigarettes, canning and mason jars, advertising displays, coffee, extracts, peanut butter, Quaker, Nabisco and Sunshine products, chocolate, spices, cocoa, cleansers, soaps, soda, political items, candy, gum, seed packets, showcases, counters and much more.
Following the death of his father, Elias Kready Sr., in 1957, Junior simply closed the door of the family store and left it frozen in time. Junior was the youngest of the Kready children, preceded in death by his brother, John Wilbur Kready, and three sisters, Mary, Edna and Anna Kready.
Junior Kready worked as a linotype operator for Steigel Printing Co. for many years. He never had the heart to sell the family store, until Brown came along and agreed to buy it piece by piece.
Some of those pieces include a large collection of Planters Mr. Peanut items, including salt and pepper shakers, banks, displays, measuring spoons, toothpicks, serving dishes, bookmarks, cups, posters and more.
There are also many beautiful cobalt blue poison bottles in different sizes and shapes, as well as animal traps, ranging from mouse traps to huge steel bear traps. A Victor Oneida bear trap from Animal Trap Co. of Lititz might bring as much as $3,000.
In addition, there are cigar boxes for brands such as Muriel, Breneiser and La Palma. And beer and soda bottle collectors will find a variety of local selections, such as Chaz Zech, George Kiehl, Jos. Hallgren, Wacker Brewery, A. Bube and E.S. Lichtenberger.
Some of the most appealing items include ordinary country store goods, like a box of Mother’s oats, a tin of Mosemann’s peanut butter, a package of Sunshine shredded wheat, Uneeda biscuits and Barnum’s animal crackers.
Local highlights include Ideal milk chocolate animals from Wilbur Chocolate, Hershey’s cocoa, an advertisement from W.L. Douglas Shoes of Manheim, a Demuth snuff crockery jar, Klein’s chocolate from Elizabethtown and a public notice for the Going Out of Business Sale for the Geo. Danner Store in Manheim.
As for gadgets, there is an Edison Mazda light bulb display in black and orange valued at $1,500 to $3,000, as well as a bright blue Pepsi dispenser, a red and white Coca Cola vendorlator case and an 1860-’70s-era rocking hobby horse.
One of the most valuable items is an 1860-’70s maple and chestnut spinning wheel from Danner Store, estimated at $2,000 to $5,000. There are also two displays that Hess expects to bring high bids, including a Western Ammunition display with a hunting dog on it valued at $1,000 to $5,000 and a 1930s Winchester folding store display valued at $2,000 to $7,000.
We’re expecting to see interest from local museums, historical foundations and collectors, says Brown. It will be a homecoming for Manheim.
The auctioneers will be John Hess, Phil Nissley and John Carl Jr. of John M. Hess Auction Service, Manheim.
WHAT: Auction of Kready’s Country Store Museum.
WHEN: 9 a.m. Saturday, May 31; preview 1 to 7 p.m. Friday,
May 30.
WHERE: 55 Doe Run Road, Manheim. Also on eBay Live.
INFO.: www.hess-auction.com.
(Copyright 2008 Lancaster Newspapers. All rights reserved.)
(c) 2008 Lancaster New Era. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.