Someone once said that a person can never be so rich that he would not bend over to pick up a stray nickel on the sidewalk. Rich or poor, everyone loves a bargain, and in the 1950s and 1960s the Alpharetta Bargain Store was the place for serious bargain hunting. People came to shop from all the surrounding areas including Tony Buckhead and eventually every state in the Union was represented.
Located in downtown Alpharetta, in time the store occupied 16,000 square feet of selling space and 6000 square feet of warehouse. Both store and warehouse were located on the block west of Main Street, between Marietta Street and Old Milton Parkway.
The store was founded by Buck Burgess (1916-1990) and his brother-in-law Nolan Stephens. It was the result of a mishap in 1951 when Buck was working as a diesel mechanic for Fulton County. A workplace accident left Buck with a broken back, surgery and restrictions on future physical labor. He took a job at Lockheed Georgia that did not require heavy lifting. In 1954 Buck and Nolan formed a partnership and leased the Standard Oil gas station from Roy Day at 53 South Main Street where California Closets and All Fired Up Pottery are located today. In 1956 they opened a second independent gas station on the west side of South Main Street just south of Marietta Street. Shortly thereafter the army surplus store was added adjacent to the gas station. (Today Chevron owns the Standard name.) When their lease on the Standard station expired five years later in 1959 they built a full service Shell station on South Main Street across the street from the very small 30’ x 30’ they had opened in 1959.
Buck and Nolan traveled throughout eight southeastern states in search of merchandise for their store, seeking stock from bankrupt retailers, going out of business sales and occasionally from factory closeouts. They…
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