The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-12-25
HOLIDAY SALES WERE GREATEST TN C|TY'S HISTORY
Dealers in All Lines Report Heavy Sales, With Better Class of Goods in
 Demand

Merchants of Birmingham have had the
 biggest holiday sales in the history oi
 the city. many of them say, and the ar
 ticles most in demand have been the
 costliest.
 | One jeweler stated yesterday that he
 had been unable to fill the demand for
 expensive jewelry, especially diamond
 rings and pins. pearls, higher-grade sil- verware and other expensive articles. He stated that several of his sales during
 the last week or ten days amounted to
 $5ooo and the majority of them ran up
 into the hundreds of dollars. There has been big demand for wrist
 watches of the expensive type, those sell ing at around $50 and 500 finding pur- chasers more readily than the cheaper kinds.
 The same jeweler stated that he had
 sold very little of the cheaper articles, nobody apparently wanting them. This is in direct contrast to his experience of for mer years, he said.
 Similar stories are told by furniture dealers. department stores, clothing and furnishing goods merchants, n2tion stores, dealers in toilet articles and the cigar merchants say the cheaper brands of "smokes'' have been a drug on the market, while their stocks of the eN- pensive kind have been well nigh ex- hausted.
 One dealer in mems furnishing goods relates an interesting incident of day or two ago. A man, apparently laoorer asked to be shown some shirts. The merchant after glancing him over and to cs1 mil his taste, pulled out box of S shirts, the cheapeskhe had in stock.
 The customer asked for better grade. Three-dollar shirts were next shown. "These won't do Show me something good" the customer requested.
 Shirts selling at $5 T.5o slo successively were shown. No sales. In despair the merchant took down box of shirts which he was selling at sl5 apiece The customer held one of them up to the light, ran his fingers over it. ruffled 1t up and nonchalantly asked the merchant to wrap up half dozen of them.
 MT. Merchant eyed 1fiim suspiciously while slowly wrapping them up. As he held the package out to the customer, still retaining a firm grip on it, he said, Ninety dollars please." Without a word the customer drew a big roll of bills from his pocket and peeling off one of the $100 variety, handed ie to the merchant
 Now I want some sox. ties and hand kerchiefs, and I don't want any of your cheap stuff Pm no common banker I'm working man." quietly remarked the customer.
 When he departed shortly afterward
 he carried with him shirts, ties, hand
 kerchiefs. 'sox and other articles of mems wearing apparel for which he had ex- , changed $50, and his "roll' had hardly been touched.
 The streets have been crowded from early morning until late at night every day during the past week. They looked as though every man, woman and child had come downtown. It didn't seem pos sible that any of them could be indoors but visits to the stores showed that some of them were in there. Every store in town was packed with customers all day long, and the clerks, exhausted by the long hours of work. heaved sighs of re- lief when closing time came. It has been a big holiday season for. the merchants of Birmngham. More morey has been spent in Birmingham in the last week than in any similar period
 in the history of the city, and the people don't seem to be broke yet, at least not all of them don't