Sears Forecast Avocado Hardside Suitcase with Keys, c. 1968–1975

The Piece

A hardside traveling case in avocado green, from the Sears Forecast line, and an unusually complete one. The shell is a molded frame in a finely pebbled finish, bound at the seam with a bright metal band, with two sprung latches flanking a centered carrying handle on fixed studs. An oval metal badge on the face reads Forecast in script, and a second plate reads Sears.

The interior is lined throughout in a pale celadon fabric woven with a small repeating lozenge figure. The lid carries a padded panel with elasticated pockets across it, and the body holds a hinged divider secured by four sprung metal clips, so the case packs in two levels and the contents stay put. Additional fitted fabric packing bags come with it. The shell interior is finished in the same olive as the outside.

It still has its keys, and they are on the original ring with a vintage 1. FC Koln fob and a small plastic goat. The crest is unmistakable: the Cologne Cathedral in black behind the red and white diagonal. Supporters of the Cologne club have kept a live goat named Hennes as their mascot since 1950, which is what the charm is. Somebody carried this case to or from Cologne and kept the souvenir on the keys, and that is the kind of thing that survives on a used object and never on a new one.

History & Provenance

Sears did not manufacture luggage. It commissioned and badged it, and the patent stamped into this case names the firm that actually built the hardware.

The legible mark reads DES. PAT. 193,234. That number resolves cleanly to United States design patent D193,234, Combined luggage handle, handle studs and locks, filed 23 May 1961 by Charles S. Gehrie of Montclair, New Jersey, and assigned to the Sardis Luggage Company of Sardis, Mississippi. It issued on 10 July 1962.

That date is a hard floor. A patent cannot be cited on a product before it is granted, so this case was built after July 1962, and its handle and lock assembly are Sardis work regardless of whose name is on the badge. Sardis Luggage operated in the Mississippi Delta and supplied cases to the major American retailers through the middle of the century, which is how a Mississippi patent ends up stamped inside a Sears box.

A second patent number appears on the opposite latch. It is too worn to read with confidence and is not transcribed here rather than printed wrong.

The ceiling comes from the color. Avocado green arrived in American consumer goods in the late 1960s and ran hard through the first half of the 1970s before the palette turned. A Sears hardside in that green, on a 1962 patent, sits comfortably between about 1968 and 1975.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

Hardside cases from this period have had a second life as furniture for twenty years now, and the reason is simple: they stack, they close, and they hide things. Two or three on a landing become a side table. One at the foot of a bed holds spare bedding. On open shelving a single strong color does more work than three neutral objects.

What separates this one from the ones that turn up at every estate sale is that nothing is missing. The badges are there, the latches work, the lining is whole, the packing bags survived, and the keys are still on the ring they came home on with a football club souvenir from Cologne attached. Cases get bought for the color and kept for that kind of detail. For a dealer or a designer dressing a mid-century room, a complete avocado hardside with its own small history is the version worth stocking.