There are several thrift stores in town, but the one a lot of people like best is called God’s Storehouse.
You can get almost anything there, and it seems like it’s always busy.
Some years ago I bought a great winter jacket there. It was two sizes larger than I am, but I liked that it allowed me to layer underneath. Lots of little pockets, and the sleeves could be cinched up and the neck buttoned tightly. It seemed new, and all I paid was $12, Over the years I spent more to have it cleaned once a year, and I still kid of miss it, silly as that sounds.
When I spilled tea on my keyboard they had them for $3. And I’ve found quality cookware, including a toaster for $5 that’s been going for two years now.
I check there first before I buy things brand new. Have you every got a really good deal for something at a thrift store?
It wasn’t at a thrift store but a yard sale. I found a Harley Davidson shovelhead frame with a clean title for 50 bucks. You better believe I snatched it up right away. OK, well I told the lady who was selling it that it was worth over 500 but she said she didn’t have time to deal with it so I don’t feel badly about taking advantage of her.
I also like thrift stores, but the ones around here have professional pricers so you don’t’ get the great deals I’ve heard of folks getting in other areas.
Yes, I should have mentioned yard sales. I do a lot of crocheting and will cruise yardsale as a lot of folks will sell partial skeins very cheaply. Once I was leaving a sale that had not yarn and the lady asked what I’d been looking for, so I told her. This stuff was all out of her mother’s house she said. So she ran back inside and brought out two grocery bags full of yarn, saying she hadn’t realized anyone would want it. I got both bags for $5.total.
Found a book at a small thrift shop that was going out of business, Billboard’s Top 100 songs of each week for the 1970’s. It was a coffee table sized book almost 2 inches thick. Paid $1 for it. Found very little about it online. But another had sold previously on Ebay for $200. I listed it and was surprised it immediately shot up to $300. It stay there till there was about 15 minutes left. A bidding war between 3 buyers ensued. It ended up selling for $720. I asked the buyer why that book was worth so much, he said there were only 12 copies printed. Don’t know how much it would be worth today, the entire list can now be found online.
Oh yeah, hobby stuff can often be had for pennies at yard sales. I get a lot of fabric that way and needlepoint canvas isn’t cheap.
I did get my favorite cheese pot at a thrift store. It’s a 3 gallon stainless steel stock pot with no hot spots. I think I paid less than a dollar for it and have used it for years. I also got a crock pot for less than a dollar that is exclusively for wax.
I was really pleased when I found one of the complete National Geographic CD-ROM sets for $7.00, but then someone else found this at the exact same store at near the same time.
A few weeks ago I picked up a pretty nice 24 inch monitor for $20. It is an older model, but functionally and cosmetically flawless. (Really, not a trace of dust or scratches or anything on it, it must have spent most of its years in a box.)
My cat clawed the leather seat of my nice $200 desk chair from Costco. I was reluctant to replace it so she could use the new one as a scratching post again, but I needed something to sit on. Even the used chairs on FB marketplace were going for $50+. I was in the local Goodwill looking for something else and spotted a like new office chair for $8. Best deal ever, and so far she hasn’t even touched it.
My favorite thrift store sells womens pants and jeans for $4.95. Kinda hard to beat that. And kids clothes are $1 per item - I’d grab what I could for my grands when I’d spot the right sizes.
I also scored a Little Tykes table with 2 chairs for $10 - both grands still use it.
Brand-New, still in the wrappers, pair of Dynamic VR-27’s (207cm). Paid too much, maybe $25. But C’mon!
Vintage Ralph Lauren Sweater. Weighs about 30 lbs. It’s awesome. When I wear it skiing, people swoon!
Got a Peavey Q215F Equalizer for $2 at a Church Yard Sale. I haven’t turned it off in over 10 years.
Years ago, the wife bought a huge box of old stock posters from the 70’s-80’s. Paid like $50 for the whole lot. I thought she was crazy. She listed them on eBay. The FIRST one (Paul Michael Glaser) sold for $80! Hadn’t even started on the Farrah Fawcett, KISS, Star Wars stuff. She had 100’s more to go! She made sooo much money on that shit!
There is a used bookstore in my town that has a handful of non-bookstore items.
I got a plush rocker for my grandnephew, similar to this one, for $15. But I think the one I got is actually a bit nicer, the stuffed dog on mine is more realistic. I did have to repair a small tear in the fabric.
It’s an unusual example of a high-quality camera, made to use the 110 film that was popular in the 1970s, primarily for really cheap, low-end cameras.
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From a different thrift store, much more recently (the same where I got the knee scooter and Haix boots mentioned in my previous post) I got this Minolta 16 II. It says “Minolta 16” on it, but it really is the 16 II variant. This is from the late 1950s or early 1960s.
It seems to have been patterned after the classic Minox (not related to Minolta, even though the names are similar) “spy camera”, though the Minox used a 9.2mm film format, and the Minolta 16 used a 16mm format.
Minolta no longer exists as a camera brand. It was once one of the great major Japanese camera brands. It got bought out by Konica, which was once one of the lesser Japanese camera companies, to form a new company called Konica Minolta. Konica Minolta got completely out of the camera business in 2006, selling what remained thereof to Sony. So, Sony’s line of cameras are the modern descendants of the Minolta cameras of old.
Men’s jackets and ties that I could not afford to purchase new. A copy of Marx’s Capital, with the former owner’s name and address written on the title page: it was that of a prominent 1930s BC socialist. Cost a dollar.I told the manager it might be worth a bit more to a collector (there are such people) but their response was, “not worth the trouble.” I later gave it to a grad student who studied the period/topic, and was thrilled to get it.
Last year I went to a thrift store near my daughter’s house. There was a knife block, full of knives, which looked interesting for $10. When I got it home I found that 6 of the seven knives in it were top quality Henckel knives, which seemed to be selling for big bucks.
On our trip down the Oregon coast we stopped in at a Goodwill at Tillamook. They had an amazing number of jigsaw puzzles, no bargain there, but I got a hardback copy, with dust jacket of a collection of C. L. Moore’s Northwest Smith stories for $4.99. The hardback is hard to find on line, but I haven’t found any for less than $50.
A while ago I found a Puzz-3D of San Francisco, still wrapped, for $10, which sold for over $60.
Best thing I ever found was a camel hair sports jacket. Navy blue, quality tailoring, and it happened to be a perfect fit. The kind of jacket old money wore to the club when they wanted to be casual. Six bucks.
Laser disc in slip cover of Henry Winkler’s Strong Kids Sfae Kids (if you ever wanted to see the Smurfs and Winkler sing about molestation, this is the film for you)- $1
Disney’s Electric Parade record in cover- $1
Tiny Buddha carved from real ivory (It’s about as tall as my thumbnail) $1
Solar cell necklace- $1
Metlar (a big monster figure from the Inhumanoids line) $7.
magnetic deck of cards with playing board (so my Mom can play outside in Florida) $2.
Thimble that looks like the head of a drunken Hobbit and is sturdy and big enough to fit my finger $2
Thrift stores often have a lot of crap. Until you find a bargain. I tend to think of them as places to go and search just for the heck of it. I scored a beautiful, hand-knit blanket for a whopping $2 at one. A couple of ancient, but very worthy suit jackets at another - absolute period pieces.
One of my favorite local places to check out is called Ax Man Surplus Store. They had hand-carved cigar boxes, a barrel full of various event patches, styrofoam heads for wig displays, old hand grenade boxes. You just never quite know what they will have on the day you walk in the door.
