Golf Gear At The Kiwanis Sale

Golf Gear At The Kiwanis Sale

I enjoy browsing through thrift shops. I rarely find anything I want to take home, but it is the thrill of the hunt, not the thrill of the find.

Still, I keep hoping that one day, I’ll find a $1.99 Scotty Cameron or a couple of real hickory clubs (I actually once did find a couple of those). I’m also on the lookout for board and card games in the vein of Pandemic, Ticket to Ride or Catan, specific pieces of electronics and a few other things.

One of the biggest thrift stores in Ann Arbor is the Kiwanis sale, which has been going on at various locations weekly since 1966. It’s actually only open on Fridays and Saturdays for a few hours, so I don’t get there very often.

I had an errand to do on that side of town yesterday, so I stopped in.

At the back of the vast warehouse of knickknacks, books, furniture, tools, clothes, electronics and household goods there was a section set up just for golf.

It’s that season.

On four large white folding banquet tables with a metal display rack between there were bags of balls, various gadgets, pairs of shoes, head covers and other small goods. At the end were several large drums packed with old clubs.

An interesting item I saw was an umbrella with a built-in ball retriever.

That gadget actually makes sense. I passed. Any ball stupid enough to go into the water deserves its watery death. Serves as an example to the other balls in my bag.

In the club bins, I saw a TaylorMade Raylor, which is an example of an early hybrid.

I don’t know the vintage of this one, but the original Raylor was launched by TaylorMade in 1988.

There also were a couple of sets of the ubiquitous “Northwestern” irons. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen clubs at a Michigan thrift store without seeing a set of Northwestern Irons. They were an Illinois based golf company that for a time was one of the largest golf manufacturers in the world.

While there, I saw several people picking out clubs and taking them to the checkout. It was a reminder that golf does not need to be expensive. For less than fifty bucks I could have walked away with balls, shoes, a bag, a set of ten or fifteen year old TaylorMade irons, a Big Bertha driver and a couple of woods.

Do they have the latest technology? No. But twenty years ago, those clubs were all the rage and reviewers marveled at how much they improved play. The clubs haven’t suddenly become bad. Assuming they don’t have some sort of structural flaw, they play as well as they ever did.

I have too many clubs as it is, so I left them all behind. I’m still looking for that $1.99 Scotty.