Sundays at Goodwill

Have you ever been to a Goodwill on the weekend?  If so, you know that you were extremely fortunate to live through the ordeal and to tell the tale.

This past Sunday, my wife and I spent the morning thinning out our closets, cabinets, and junk drawers.  We considered it a cursory round of spring cleaning, despite the fact that the weather here in the Midwest is decidedly more Christmas-like.  Since we try not to be wasteful, we boxed up all of these lightly used articles of clothing, dishware, mugs, and odds & ends, loaded up our automobile, and hauled all of these donations to the local Goodwill.  Not only did this save us considerable clutter and keep this stuff out of the local landfill, but these donations are tax deductible AND it gives me the perfect excuse to go thrift shopping!

Okay, so maybe immediately going into a secondhand shop to buy more junk after de-cluttering the apartment slightly defeats the purpose.  I never claimed to be a logical creature.  Although, after fighting my way into and out of that Goodwill, I'm just happy to be a still living creature.

Weekends are generally a busy time for any sort of retail establishment - naturally, a great many people have those two days off, after all.  However, Saturdays and Sundays at Goodwill are an entirely different, apocalyptic, lawless wasteland.  Within minutes of opening, store displays are rifled through and torn beyond all recognition, children are running everywhere, checkout lines wind into the aisle-ways, and people are urinating in the changing room.  I'm not even kidding with that last bit, my wife worked for GW for two years and this happens more than any civilized human being should expect.

This Sunday afternoon was no exception, although to my knowledge, the only thing pissy was the mood of my fellow, close-quartered patrons.  For instance, above you can see what was left of the toy racks, which had become some unsupervised kid's unofficial playroom.  No matter, I still pressed on, as I pull of undiscovered treasures was too great to resist.

What a minute - enhance that image!  I spy trading cards among that mess of Fisher Price, Hot Wheels, and carnage:

Not only were they trading cards, they were Sports Illustrated for Kids oddballs from the 1990's.  I'd hit paydirt!  Just underneath them was a full, unopened pack of cards, as well; but, that foil envelope was for Orange County Choppers or some other such nonsense that holds no appeal to me.  Sporting-based oddballs, however, that's much more my speed!

Speaking of speed, that pile (headed by NFL Hall of Famer, Tony Dorsett) even included a new runner for my burgeoning collection of track & field/cross country/marathon runners; the multi-sport SI for Kids panels are a constant source for these rarely shown on cardboard athletes.

Edwin Moses took home gold medals in the 400 meter hurdles at the 1976 and 1984 Olympics and set the world record in the event four times throughout his career.  Speaking as someone who still thanks the heavens for cancelling the one meet I was scheduled to hurdle, that's incredibly impressive!  Along with Mr. Moses, we have Mike Schmidt, a man who I'm sure requires no introduction on this (mostly) baseball blog.

According to my research, before they ended up in the Orland Park Goodwill disaster zone, these cards were included in perforated panels in a 1997 edition of SI for Kids.  Unlike their normal in-magazine premiums, these "Legends" cards are over-sized with dimensions similar to that of you average police set.  That is about all I could dig up on these bad boys; I do not know what specific issue they were included with, who else was part of this set, or what dictated their choice of sporting legends.

Throwing me for another curve was this extremely similar, collation of  "Leader" cards included in the stack.   Featuring a green border instead of the muted grey found on their brethren, these pasteboards are otherwise identical in design and dimension and highlight athletes who hold the all-time lead in significant statistical categories.  For instance, Rickey Henderson makes the checklist for his all-time stolen base title, while "Hammerin' Hank" was still history's home run king at the time of publication in 1997.

Sidenote - nice touch by SI to actually use an image from Aaron's record-breaking blast.

Also found in the stack was my favorite card of the bunch, which kicked off this post.  Here's another look at the then all-time saves king, Lee Smith.  Even though he's shown with the Cardinals here (and was an Expo when this went to press), he's shown at beautiful Wrigley Field and the emerald borders of the card mesh perfectly with the lush, ivy-covered walls of the Friendly Confines.  Plus, any new card I can add of the former Cubs closer and should-be Hall of Famer is a win in my book.

As you can see in the scans, much like the state of the Goodwill store space itself, these cards were a little bit worse for ware.  There's significant paper loss, probably from the initial separation of the panel(s) by an eager child of the 90's.  Furthermore, since they were found loose and unprotected on the chaotic store shelves, the edges and the corners are anything but crisp.  Even still, having never even seen these oddities before, there was no way that I would be leaving them behind.  So, despite the goal of the day being to rid ourselves of as much junk as possible, I couldn't help but bring a little bit more into our home.  I'm sure my wife was thrilled.

Does anyone have any further information about these "Legends" and "Leaders?"  Were they part of the same issue of SI for Kids or separate?  Why are they bigger than your standard issue SI4K card?  Was there a special reason that this issue or issues included cards of leaders and legends rather than their typical smattering of current athletes across sports?  If you know the answers to any of these questions, please feel free to enlighten me in the comment section below!

Also, is anyone else's local Goodwill anarchistic on the weekend, or is that just out here?  I feel lucky to have gotten out of there in one piece!