They did the same in the UK, if you were lucky enough to have a Woolworths.
Music stores were big city which meant lengthy train or bus journeys, for most of us it was pay by instalments via mail order catalogue
Congratulations on your NBD
Just saw this, yeah we had a Woollies in every town in the Midlands, and they weren't small, it was the old department store model then taking up the most commanding aspects of the town - them and and the co-op (are you being served?) you could get lost in them which I frequently did as a 5 year 'owd while I has gone off to look at all the sweets, me old lady would have buggered off to lingerie to try on a girdle, leaving me desperate and bawlin' in a sea of busy shoppers who cared not a jot. You could take dogs in then - in fact everywhere - before some bright spark decided it wasn't in the interest of public health, but at least I had our 'owd Skippy a border collie to bury my head in her fur and dripping snot and tears all over her while waiting for the police to take me to gaol for being lost, never to be returned to home. She died in '72 aged 16 and the saddest time for a 8 year owd.
Anyway, wasn't Woollies great?, wish I had a time machine I'd ha bought a few of them Matsumuku's to bring back to the now, but being 11 when dribbling all over the first electric guitars I'd ever seen in the flesh, of course, I never has to coin to pay even those cheap prices, now look at 'em - sought after by every vintage Japanese bass aficionado and for good reason, most of 'em played as good or better than their US counterparts for a fraction.
I do remember the record department, primarily because one of the shop assistants there was drop dead gorgeous to me, she was never interested in an 11 year owd, her bein' 16 and orl that but the prices were sweet you were talking 75p to £2 for the most expensive LP way cheaper than the usual outlets, bulk purchasing I 'spose, but the feather in Woolworth's cap back then was the real live guitars, and the bird in the record department.
