Part 2 of our Iconic Bluffton Christas ad feature Commerical Bank distributed $8,000 to its Christmas Savings customers
There’s nothing new about the concept of Christmas savings clubs. Bluffton’s Commercial Bank offered one to customers slightly longer than one century ago.
Here’s the club’s 1927 advertisement in the Bluffton News. The ad states: The first Christmas Savings Checks in Bluffton were mailed to club members 10 years earlier, on Dec. 1, 1917.
The ad continued: The Christmas Club Idea was in its infancy them, and in recent years has grown to huge proportions. The total paid out then (in 1917) was $624.92. This year (1927) $8,000 was paid to Christmas Club members by this bank.
The ad listed the 1917 members of the club, and those names are below.
The Commercial Bank, known as “The Old Reliable Bank,” was located in what is today’s John Wagner Nationwide Agency, 105 N. Main St.
Unfortunately, the bank did not survive The Great Depression and closed in the early 1930s.
