Meyer Goldberg Promotion: Win a Mercury Comet – January 1965

If you grew up or lived in Lorain in the 1960s or 70s, then you probably spent some, or perhaps most, of your grocery dollars at one of the Meyer Goldberg stores. 

Living on the west side, we shopped at the store on Oberlin Avenue. It looked very different architecturally from the typical national chains (such as A&P), which tended to occupy space in the huge shopping centers being built at that time.

But it didn't start out as a Meyer Goldberg location. It was originally built to be Jay's Sparkle Market, operated by pioneer grocer Jay Jursinski. Here's the full-page ad that ran in the Journal on May 2, 1962.

But by January 1964, the store had become the third outlet in the Meyer Goldberg chain. It was announced very quietly in this ad, which ran on January 1, 1964.

A year later in January 1965, Meyer Goldberg celebrated the one-year anniversary of his new store on Oberlin Avenue with a very creative promotion: the opportunity to win a 1965 Mercury Comet, "built in Lorain by Lorain people."

Here's the promotional spread that ran in the Journal on January 12, 1965.

A few days later this article provided some of the details of the remodeling of the Oberlin Avenue store, as well as shining the light on some of the personnel working behinds the scene, including stockholder Jay Jursinski.

So who won the Comet? I knew you were going to wonder, so here is the announcement of the winner, which ran as part of a store ad on February 24, 1965.