Cool stuff found at Goodwill

I have bought brand new x-country skis and poles for $5.00! also, picture frames -I got a nice frame for $2.00 (worth at least $50.00). my GF also found a Gucci bikini (brand new, never used) for $5.00. However, MOST of the merchandise is really beat up-and a lot of it is damaged. You can also buy tons of novels, obsolete reference works, etc. from as far back as the 1950’s-but most of this stuff is worthless.

An awesome black wool Benetton sweater that fit me perfectly. I still have it.

I work across the sreet from a Salvation Army and often go there at lynchtime.I recently got three Ed McBain books, two Stephen Kings, and three of Tabitha King’s for $1 each. Tabitha King’s books are very hard to find, and very good reading. Too bad she is so overshadowed by her husband.

I once got three Harry Potter DVDS and the boxed set of Star Wars 4,5,6 with an extra outtake DVD for $20, and they threw in the BBC’s 3 DVD set of the Narnia movies for $5!

A bottle-shaped glass vase with swirling stripes on it. The kind I’d seen often at art shows, made in the artist’s studio. It was inscribed Labino 1968. I knew at the time those were quite expensive and that 1968 seemed like a really early date. I couldn’t recall seeing anything like that until the mid-70s. I bought it for $2.99 and took it home to research.

It turns out that Dominick Labino was a ceramics engineer at Dow-Corning and designed the first kiln small enough to be feasible in an artist’s studio, as well as developing appropriate glass formulas to use for it. His earliest signed stuff is 1966. Along with his co-developer Harvey Littleton, he helped popularize studio glass as a popular art form. Labino’s studio is still producing gorgeous original work, although he’s dead now.

It’s kind of ugly, but so interesting as history that I stil have it displayed. It vanquished quite a bit of my ignorance!

Huh. Do you sit in a rocking chair and knit while you watch?

A beautiful Mondo di Marco (made in Florence, Italy) suit jacket in roughly my size for about $8 IIRC.

A good Goodwill karma story…

A friend of mine bought a sport coat at Goodwill and discovered in the pocket an engraved Zippo lighter. Imagining an agrieved family who took their deceased dad’s/husband’s clothes to Goodwill without knowing the lighter was in the pocket, my friend returned the lighter to the store. If a family member came back to inquire, it would be there. If not, the store could sell it.

My friend later left a sport coat at a restaurant or some other venue. He retraced steps, looked everywhere. Nothiing. On one of his regular shopping trips to Goodwill, he found the coat he’d lost and bought it back gladly.

I bought a grape colored faux leather pants and jacket for 2.00 to give to my niece. She loved it – it looked very chic in a wild-70s kind of way.

I once bought a switchboard. It was a 6-foot oak thing that looked like a secretary table with cords coming out of it. Was probably in some hotel office in the 20’s.
Cost $65 and cleaned up really nice. Would be worth a few hundred to a decorator if I wanted to sell it.

A Puzz 3D of San Francisco, still shrink wrapped, for $10. Normal price, $60.

A CD of the Marx Brothers radio show, with a radio version of Duck Soup, $1.

I love the Salvation Army Thrift Shop. A few years ago at the SA shop I found a gorgeous, muted-olive-colored Neiman Marcus suede jacket for ten bucks. It looked as if it had never been worn. In fact, it is so nice that it still has never been worn; I put it away for a special occasion, and nothing quite special enough has come along.

My husband picked up a set of dishes at Goodwill for cheap (I believe for $15 or something close) for his college apartment. They were nice stoneware dishes, so he kept them throughout college, then when he moved out on his own, and when I moved in with him and started decorating, I realized they perfectly matched the color scheme we had picked out (Navy and Chocolate Brown). Now, they’re starting to chip, and I hate the thought of replacing them. They’re too perfect.

(I know that sounds way too Martha Stewart-ish, but I don’t care!)

A classic “film noir” London Fog grey trenchcoat with zip-out-able faux fur lining for $8.