New Winner Wood Minnow Lure

New Winner Wood Minnow

The New Winner Wood Minnow was a product offered by Sears Roebuck and Company. This beautiful example is housed in a standard wood box with a railed or channeled slide type. Through out the fishing industry we see once again wholesalers, and jobbers, taking the product of another manufacturer and either adding their own touch or just repackaging the initial product. Big trade houses, Sears, Montgomery Ward, HSBC and others were locked into the century long “department store wars” each trying to offer everything under the sun a consumer could want at the lowest possible price. This would allow a consumer a one stop shop from everything from baseball gear to clothes and household items. Try looking through a catalog from 1915 vs 2015 for a comparison. The fishing lure companies at the time would benefit by increased volume sales and recognition, but at a cost to move volume usually at a lower margin. Selling to jobber companies was not about what was best for the consumer, it was what was the cheapest, sounds like Walmart of today.

This version or New Winner was Shakespeare Bait Company. The antique fishing lure housed inside this slide top wooden box is a Rhodes or Shakespeare 33 underwater minnow lure. The antique lure has 3 treble hooks, 2 of which are attached to the lure with Shakespeare’s flat plate hardware and unmarked front and rear props. This wooden antique lure with glass eyes is green fancy back in color, and the condition speaks for itself. The box is unmarked on the end caps so we cant see a designation for the lure accompanying it. There are various versions of this box some which have a paper label and a model number on the top and later a cardboard box.