10 reasons to wait out the cash registers at Goodwill

I popped into the local Goodwill yesterday with the hopes of finding some binders, perhaps a book or two, or maybe that pair of jeans I always seem to need.

I found none of that - but I did find baseball cards! Buying cards at Goodwill is a mythical event (you can count the number of times it's happened to me on one hand), but this time, waiting innocently on the pegs near the checkout aisle were a heap of tightly-packed bags of cardboard, a mere $2.99 a pop. I grabbed seven of the most promising ones and just about ran to the cash registers.

The moment I got there, some kind of global company error made Goodwill's entire electronic system collapse. They couldn't take any payments. The fellow retail worker in me felt terrible for the employees - the worst of humanity comes out in a lot of people when they can't buy that $4 trinket - but the fact is I really wanted those cards because how often do I find these at Goodwill?? So I decided I'd wait it out. And I waited. And waited.

After a while, a manager decided they'd take exact change since the credit system was still on the fritz - I didn't have any cash on me, but I found an ATM not far away, got back into the spiraling line, and soon enough the cards were mine! Of course, that's quite an ordeal for a few bags' worth of baseball cards, so the question remains: was it worth it? 

You better believe it - and here's 10 reasons why it was!

#1 - I found cards I needed

The sheer thrill of digging through that big of a treasure of unexpected cardboard is worth the $20 I spent on its own, but fact is there was a nice heap of stuff in there I actually needed.

I left behind a few of the packs that looked to have nothing but '88 Donruss & '89 Fleer because I've seen enough of those for a lifetime. But a bunch of them seemed to have a good amount of not-as-junky mid '90s cardboard, which I figured would result in a good amount of material for my binders.

Against all odds, I even discovered a neat throwback card I'd never seen before with this spiffy Matt Williams!

#2 - I finally conquered 1994 Fleer

I don't know if it's just me, but I seem to have a harder time finding stuff from '94 Fleer than most others of the era.

It's not a particularly notable set, but it's achieved a bit of notoriety with me because of how little I see of it in the wild. That changed, somehow, with this random trip to Goodwill - two of the packs I bought were all '94 Fleer! I was over the moon. (Has anyone ever been this excited over '94 Fleer?)

About half of the cards I ended up needing from this buy were from '94 Fleer, and I'm particularly excited about that Greg Colbrunn because wow that's a beautiful card.

#3 - 1996 Score (and its wonderful horizontals)

I've always thought mid '90s Score gets a bad rap - they were doing stuff just as exciting as Topps and the other heavy hitters of the era.

The horizontals in '96 Score are particularly nifty, and thanks to Goodwill for providing me with a bunch more!

#4 - I gave a home to cards from a fellow collector

Whoever owned these cards before me was obviously a collector because all the cards in each bag were in numerical order - I don't need much more from '88 Score these days, but it was nice to see all the green-bordered cards arranged together.

I often think about what'll happen to my collection after my time is up - please no horror stories about it ending up in a landfill - but it's nice to know that I was at least able to give a good home to this batch of outcast cardboard.

#5 - Tough '90s inserts?!

I could tell through the plastic that one of the bags had a few cards that didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the  - imagine my surprise when I opened it and found a nice stack of weird, cool '90s inserts!

Everything in this scan besides the Clark is numbered, and that "Knothole Gang" is a wonderful set I'd never seen before.

#6 - Cool '90s inserts I forgot I liked

I hadn't bought one of these "Slideshow" inserts in a while, and this Raul Mondesi reminded me of how awesome (and very, very '90s) they are.

#7 - The sheer act of randomness

If I've tried to impart one thing in the history of this blog, I hope it's the joy that can be had in digging through a trove of random, mysterious cardboard.

Was anything I found in these bags a huge, pressing need? Not really. But only buying cards that fill a great gap is boring, and if I did that I'd probably add about three cards to my collection a year. There's pleasure in the randomness!

Nothing in this scan fills a particularly massive gap in my collection, but don't mistake that for me not loving them, and smiling at the delight of sliding them into my binders.

#8 - I get to talk about guys I never mention on this blog

I only have so much airtime on the blog, and unfortunately that means I've omitted a few guys who occupy prime real estate in my binders - so Jeromy Burnitz, Terry Mulholland, Mark Loretta...here's your moment in the limelight.

Mike Sweeney is an especially egregious omission - he's one of my biggest and long-standing player collections, and I feel like I've never said that in over a decade around here.

#9 - Early '90s Score oddballs

Score put out a nice little smattering of smaller box-set issues in the early '90s that are largely forgotten today.

One of the bags was exclusively filled with these lovable oddballs, which was good because - as became glaringly apparent as I dug through them - there's still so many of these I need!

#10 - Sombrero Bip

Because Sombrero Bip makes everything worth it.