(MONEY Magazine) – Quick, what do Benjamin Franklin and Cher have in common? Besides a way with wigs. The answer: At-home shopping set off light bulbs in the minds of both. Franklin's brainchild, founded in 1744, was the nation's first merchandise catalogue, specializing in 600 academic books. Cher's new Sanctuary, a catalogue featuring (surprise, surprise) such offbeat furnishings as leopard- print bedspreads, is currently being test-mailed to an exclusive club of 50,000 big spenders. Sometime between the two wigged ones, of course, Americans got hooked on armchair shopping. Last year, a record 98 million consumers bought an estimated $60 billion of merchandise from home, paging through 15,000 specialty catalogues, surfing through more than 16 home-shopping channels and clicking across dozens of cyberspace retail menus, where more than half a million items are marketed via on-line services such as CompuServe and Prodigy (for more about on-line shopping, see the table opposite). The growth of home shopping has been nothing short of phenomenal. Sales last year zoomed ahead by 20%, leaving traditional retail sales -- up just 6% -- in the dust. Some avenues have fared even better. For example, TV home shopping, a comparatively small $500 million enterprise just eight years ago, is now a $2 billion annual business.

So with the holidays looming, MONEY decided to sink deep into the don't-leave-your-seat shopping craze. Bypassing established mail-order standbys, we pored over more than a hundred lesser-known catalogues and sources, canvassed a dozen retail analysts and trend watchers, and got wired to several savvy cyber-surfers. The yield: 10 tasty and high-value outlets and products that will expand your home-shopping horizons and make short work of gift lists. Figure on paying about $4 to $16 for shipping each item (depending on weight and method). For overnight delivery, tack on an additional $7 to $10 each. Here's the best of what we found: Green-thumb special. Hardly a mere pastime anymore, gardening has become an outdoor sport, with sales of gardening supplies blossoming to $22 billion last year, twice the 1989 total. Your favorite dirt bug might appreciate Plow & Hearth's Super-Scoot ($29.95; 800-627-1712), a 25-inch-by-13-inch bench on wheels that's designed to spare gardeners' knees and backs. Handy for weeding and trimming shrubs, the Scoot arrives fully assembled and has a flip-top compartment to store tools and seeds -- both of which are also available in wide array from the P&H catalogue. Big feat. The number of people who call themselves recreational hikers has nearly doubled since 1991 -- to 40 million last year. So it's no surprise that hiking boots have crossed over to fashion's pathways. Shoppers looking for authentic boots -- as opposed to the urban-chic varieties stitched by sneaker makers -- should consider top-of-the-line Vasque boots. They'll satisfy explorers of the Grand Canyon and Grand Central Terminal alike. The popular Sundowner style, shown at right, is made of full-grain, GoreTex-lined, weatherized leather. You can find a pair for about $180 (along with dozens of other Vasque models) in catalogues from REI (800-426-4840) and CampMor (800-526-4784). Home ground. Espresso/cappuccino machines are still selling faster than you can grind beans. This year so far, close to 253 million home units have been sold, up from 220 million last year. But what good is Continental coffee without European cups? The solution: the rustic hand-painted espresso cups, tray and sugar/ creamer combo shown at left ($58). The set is among 320 hand- ( painted Italian dishes, tiles and vases, including some produced in a 14th- century Florentine castle, offered by the idiosyncratic Bel Vasaio catalogue (800-962-7061). Owned by an East Orleans, Mass. husband-and-wife team who regularly crisscross Italy searching for unusual regional pottery, the five-year-old Bel Vasaio will soon expand its reach to Spain and Portugal. Toddler tech. Designed with auto air-bag engineering, the air-filled car seat (shown on page 223) inflates into a cushy 17-inch-by-14-inch travel seat that meets all government safety requirements for kids up to 40 pounds. It features extended nine-inch side panels for better head support, inflates in just 90 seconds by drawing power from a car cigarette lighter and, when deflated, packs into a neat five-pound package with its own carrying case. It's $99.95 through the One Step Ahead catalogue (800-274-8440), which also features more than 90 new toys and togs for infants through four-year-olds. Basso profundo. Most speakers sold with the increasingly popular miniaturized home audio/video systems sound as tinny as they are tiny. But not the pair pictured here (above, left). For a reasonable $199, Henry Kloss offers a stereo-sound innovation called Soundworks: two mighty mite speakers, each 3 1/2 inches tall, give mini-sound systems a giant hi-fi boost. Available in black and machine-age beige, the three-piece set includes two speakers and a self-powered amplifier that runs on a 12-volt battery or an AC adapter. It's sold exclusively through Cambridge SoundWorks (800-367-4434). Northwest passage. Hailing from the Pacific Northwest, Sea Bear (800-645-3474) caters to fish fanciers, specializing in salmon and oysters, smoked or poached. One hot seller for a range of tastes: the $69.95 Seafood Buffet, which includes 2 1/2 pounds of vacuum-packed smoked oysters and mussels plus three varieties of salmon. Up from fruitcake. We searched hard for a tasty send-away cake and had all but given up when two confections arrived from Bland Farms (800-843-2542). Don't let the name fool you. The peach and brandy pound cake, and its butter pecan counterpart, are as good as any grandma makes. Plus, they're a deal at $26.95 each. Although the packaging is nothing fancy, the all-butter cakes are moist, flavorful and generous -- enough to serve 20 people. Housebound. Serving up festive feasts with all the frills may be traditional for the holidays, but far more practical for housebound folks -- including ! exhausted new parents -- are full-fledged meals that arrive ready to eat. The Extended Family (800-235-7070) delivers such meals with dispatch, packaging 35 home-cooked-quality frozen dinners. Founder Gretchen Cryer, 59, took her concept national in 1992 after a year of cooking and delivering meals overnight from her New York City home to her invalid parents in Dunreith, Ind. Today her dinners -- such as chicken marsala or flounder stuffed with crabmeat -- arrive via Airborne Express packed in dry ice. When popped in the oven, they're ready in 35 minutes. Prices for seven dinners and desserts (you choose a minimum of seven from the 35 menus) are $64.95 for ample single portions, $119.95 for two. Retro disk. Natalie Cole's collection of musical classics, Unforgettable, was a runaway hit in 1992, selling more than 5 million copies. Harry Connick Jr., for the seventh year in a row, is riding to the bank on Frank Sinatra's silky scales. And Tony Bennett is crooning again in all the best places. We get it: People want new oldies. In tune with the retread trend is the Collector's Choice music catalogue (800-923-1122). Spanning the decades, Collector's sells digitally remastered copies of hard-to-find recordings. The catalogue features more than 200 artists from 1950 to 1980, from soul to doo- wop and from Dixieland to jazz. One pick surfacing fast: Doris Day: It's Magic (boxed set: $124.95, shown on page 220). It includes a 92-page memorabilia book and four CDs containing 146 songs from Doris' heyday. Kid screens. One out of every four school-age children now has access to a home computer, making the right software and video games surefire gift hits. Davidson & Associates (800-545-7677), a leading supplier of multimedia software, has managed to meld the home and classroom market. Two cool new offerings: Flying Colors ($89.95; Mac and Windows) has more than 17 design tools and 1,000 color images so kids ages eight and up can create computer-art masterpieces, complete with animation and jazzy sound effects. Math Blaster: In Search of Spot ($79.95; CD-ROM, DOS and Windows), for ages six to 12, enlists kids in an action adventure with a character called Blasternaut to rescue his friend Spot -- get this, Mom and Dad! -- by solving math problems along the way.