Frankly, the catalog business has thinned out a lot since I sold the office-supply shop in 2019. A pile of names from the old discount-catalog round-up I used to keep on the desk are gone, merged, or now just a website with a clearance tab. So instead of pretending sixty different catalogs are still out there mailing twice a month, here is the honest 2026 list, in the order I actually pull them off the kitchen counter when I am hunting a deal.
What counts as a discount catalog now
To my eye, a real discount catalog has to do two things. One, mark prices below what the same item runs at the big-box or department store. Two, put the price on the page so I can compare without three clicks and a pop-up. A site that says "members save more" without telling me the number is not a discount catalog. It is a fishing expedition for my email.
I also cross out anything that bills monthly. My grandkids tell me I am cheap about subscriptions. I call it thrifty. Either way, the catalogs below either let you order one item and pay for it, or, in the Fingerhut case, give you a credit line you can choose to use or not.
The ones still mailing in 2026
Dr. Leonard's
Health and mobility goods, mostly aimed at the 60-and-up crowd. Compression socks, diabetic shoes, arthritis aids, that whole shelf. Their advertised discounts run as deep as 65 percent off list, though list price on a $14 grabber tool is somewhat fictional to begin with. The catalog itself is still mailed several times a year out of Ohio, and the parent group pulled in around $137 million in revenue last year, so they are not going anywhere.
Carol Wright
Carol Wright is the one a lot of folks worried about, and for good reason. The old parent, AmeriMark, went into Chapter 11 in April 2023. Colony Brands (the Wisconsin outfit that owns Figi's and the Swiss Colony cheese boxes) bought the assets a couple of months later, and the brand kept running. Apparel, slippers, household helpers, low single-digit and teens for most clothing items. Quality is what you pay for, no surprises there, but the price-per-item math holds up.
Fingerhut
Fingerhut is its own animal. The catalog is the storefront, but the real product is the credit line through WebBank. You can spread payment over six or eight months. If you carry a balance, the interest will eat any discount you got. If you pay it off in the deferral window, you got furniture or a microwave at a real discount. Used carefully, it is a tool. Used carelessly, twelve bucks a month for a $200 item turns into $260. I have seen both happen in my own family.
Harriet Carter
Gadgets, oddball gifts, the kind of stuff you did not know existed and then cannot remember life without. Wales, Pennsylvania outfit. Smaller operation now, but still mailing the catalog and still running the website. Free shipping promotions show up about every six weeks if you are patient.
LTD Commodities (formerly ABC Distributing)
ABC and LTD merged years ago, and now everything ships under the LTD name. Bulk gift items, holiday decor, kid stuff, household goods. The unit prices are low. Shipping is the catch. Read the cart total before you click, because a $9 trinket can carry $7 in shipping if you only buy the one. Buy six, the per-item shipping flattens out fast. That is the whole game with LTD.
The Vermont Country Store
Not a deep discounter, but a discount catalog the way I use the word, because they price the page and they keep the math simple. Hard-to-find items, the candies and lotions and flannel pajamas your mother used to buy. They mail catalogs all year and the spring 2026 book just landed.
Plow & Hearth
Outdoor decor, lanterns, doormats, planters. The Early Spring 2026 catalog is out. Watch for their end-of-season clearance, which runs around 50 to 70 percent off summer goods in late August and again on Christmas decor in mid-January. Mark the calendar.
Coldwater Creek
Women's apparel, sized through 3X, and the catalog is still mailed. They went through their own bankruptcy years back and the buyout has had its rough patches. Read recent reviews before ordering for the first time. Sales are real, but service has been bumpy, and that is straight from customers, not me.
Blair
Blair is steady. Easy-fit clothing for older shoppers, ongoing clearance, frequent 50-to-70-percent-off offers in the back of the book. Not flashy. Not trying to be Talbots. They mail several catalogs a year and the prices on the page are the prices you pay.
Talbots
Talbots is not really a discount catalog, but their twice-yearly red-dot clearance and the cardholder coupons add up to real discount territory if you wait. Full price is full price. The patient shopper does fine.
Orvis
Same story. Orvis sells fly-fishing gear and country apparel at full retail, but the sale catalog and the outlet section move serious inventory at 30 to 60 percent off. If you fish, watch their post-Father's-Day clearance. That is when waders go.
Improvements
Improvements is harder to pin down in 2026 than it used to be. The brand has changed hands more than once and the print catalog presence has been thin. The website still runs, but I would not count on the heavy print mailings the way you could in the 2010s. If a catalog shows up, fine. Do not subscribe waiting for one.
Names from the old list that are gone or quiet
Worth being straight about: a fair number of catalogs that used to anchor lists like this are no longer in business or no longer mail anything you would recognize as a catalog.
- Sears stopped mailing the Big Book in 1993 and the consumer-facing Sears we knew is essentially gone. Sears Hometown liquidated by early 2023.
- Chadwicks, Spiegel, and Newport News are names from a different era. Spiegel was sold and the brand has bounced around. Do not expect a catalog in the mailbox.
- Crazy Shirts, Stampin' Up!, Discount Dance Supply, and a number of the specialty names from the 2021 article are still around as websites, but I would not call them discount catalogs in the mail-order sense.
How I actually save money on a catalog order
Three rules, and I have used them since the mail-order business was paper checks and a 14-day wait.
- Add to cart, then close the tab. Nine times out of ten you get an email within 48 hours with a 10 to 20 percent code. That is a real discount and it costs you nothing to wait two days.
- Look at shipping before the line item. A $19 sweater with $11 shipping is a $30 sweater. Some of these catalogs run free-shipping weekends every month. Wait for one.
- Read the bottom of the back page. The clearance grid printed in the catalog is almost always cheaper than the website's clearance section, and the SKU numbers still work when you call. Yes, calling. Some of us still do.
Bottom line
The discount-catalog world is smaller than it was when the original version of this article ran, but the dozen or so names above are still mailing real catalogs and still pricing the page. That is more than I can say for half the websites that begged for my email last week. Order one or two, see which ones suit you, and toss the rest in the recycling. Frankly, that is how my wife tells me I have always done it, and I have not seen a reason to change.
