Royal TV & Appliance Center was located on the northeast corner of Commerce Street and Georgia Avenue in Summerville in the building formerly occupied by the Royal Theater. The store held a drawing on September 1, 1955 for "this beautiful $825 Admiral Hi-Fi Radio Phonograph," according to an earlier advertisement in the Summerville News.
The only person I can identify in the above photograph is the small man standing center right wearing overalls and leaning against the box. That appears to be Summerville's most famous "man about town," Homer Sanders. (In his Chattooga County book, author Robert Baker included information about Homer on page 924.)
Adjusted for inflation, the $825 Admiral radio-phonograph would cost you more than $7,000 in today's dollars. Strangely enough, Royal TV & Appliance Center ran an ad in the Summerville News a month later offering Motorola televisions for only $159.95, or almost $1,400 in today's dollars.
The contest winner was not identified in the following week's Summerville News. Perhaps it will forever remain a mystery, just like the price difference between a radio-phonograph and a television set in 1955.
You can see what this building looked like as the Royal Theater by clicking here.
Photograph by T. Emmett Nunn. Courtesy of Chattooga County Library.
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2012 Greg W. McCollum. All rights reserved.