So I paid $2 and now I own a 6" silver metal statue of Sideshow Bob. The cool part is he separtes at the waist, revealing a two inch serated blade attached to his top half. How wonderful is that? How much do I want to leave it sticking in a dead body?
Oh! How are we supposed to post after that? Truly the thrift gods have smiled upon you today, Annie.
I was actually thinking of running by Goodwill today, as I find myself in dire immediate need of a cake plate with a dome cover, and can’t find anywhere nearby that sells one. (Yes, I do know the futility of going into a thrift store with a specific item in mind, but the beauty of the thrift store is that anything can happen).
Not truly remarkable, I guess, but I still have - and love - a Wearever cast aluminum Dutch oven (with lid) that I bought from Goodwill around 26 years ago. I got it for $1.
I bought a little plaster figurine of a duck at Goodwill recently, but only because he looked absolutely pissed off and was, inexplicably, a rich turquoise color. He’s in that threatening stare-down posture that you often see when your little kid runs out to pet the cute little geese, but never see in cute little knickknacks.
I like to think that he scares intruders away from my desk.
A vintage, fully-embroidered, red Shriner’s fez. It says “Tehran” across the top above the scimitar and crescent moon. For years I’ve wanted to go as a Shriner to Halloween but I’ve never been able to locate one of their cars… someday though.
My sister is the Goodwill Queen. She lives in the Pheonix suburbs and her local Goodwills have 1/2 price Saturday every other week. She bought a darling white iron daybed for $15-20 and a trundle for $5. Planning around that, she redecorated the bedroom of the daughter of her friend. She bought fabric for curtains and a duvet cover at the discount fabric store and she and her daughter sewed those. Her daughter (my niece) did artwork to match the castles and flowers decor on the fabric.
She and Lara (my niece) have found lots of off-the-wall stuff. Some of it she resells, some she gives away. She just loves a bargain, even though she makes $100K a year.
I have something almost as good as a Thrift Shop right where I live–the “hand-me-down” table in my apartment’s laundry room. Among the items I’ve picked up: a crystal rabbit, a new 5x8 display rug from Home Depot, a serpentine jewelry box with pearl inlay top, a couple of vases, a cobalt-blue candle holder, and my favorite, a large clear-glass coffee mug.
I worked at a thrift store for a few years in the 90s, and loved putting things out for sale like that.
At some point in my stint there, we sold:
A wedge of foam, like furniture padding foam, but too small to be useful. The tags read something like “Wedge of Foam! Who can use a foam wedge? You can use one! Somehow! 55 cents.” I put it on my wares cart, wheeled it out, and as I put things out, a regular customer stopped, picked up the foam. “What’s this?” “A foam wedge!” “What’s it for?” “Dunno, whatever a wedge of foam is used for, I guess.” She stuck it in her cart and bought it.
An objet d’art. Someone donated a glass Christmas-tree-shaped jar and a box of baby-doll heads. I crammed the heads into the jar, labelled the jar “Objet d’art 99 cents,” and it sold in minutes. The cashier did ask me later what idiot would have donated a jar full of doll heads.
A Sports Illustrated shoe phone; I spun off a long strip of tags and wrote in tiny handwriting a full transcript of the long “Hey! It’s a shoe and a phone!” commercial that used to run in the 80s, taped one end of the tag strip to the phone, and put it out for sale. My manager began loudly chastising me for goofing around and wasting tags-- in the middle of the tirade, a customer found the phone, began laughing at the tags, and decided to buy the phone simply because they liked the tags. Which ended the tirade.
A baggie of gravel. Out of boredom, stuck a handful of gravel into a baggie, labelled it helpfully as “a baggie of gravel,” snuck it into the jewelry case, where no one noticed it for days until a customer asked a manager about purchasing it. They bought it (something paltry like 11 cents), but I did get in trouble for that one.
Several years ago, I bought a cookbook from a thrift store. Obviously, it wasn’t new - in fact it was printed back in the 70’s, complete with a day glo cartoony cover. What kind of 70’s cookbook ends up in a thrift store? Italian? Vegetarian? Easy meals for two? No such luck.
I bought a coat that ended up being from the 1917 Saint Paul Winter Carnival. Thick red wool. Sheep skin on the inside, thick white felt trim. And a patch on the sleeve that has a jaunty
Hook 'Em Cow
with a picture of a jumping cow. It turns out that they called South Saint Paul “down hook em cow way” because that is where cows were slaughtered and hung on hooks.
