Haven’t they always been sort of hip? The kinda place you can buy a raspberry beret?
I was a 2nd-hand beneficiary of a great thrift store find. My friend found a “barrel-full” of mint-in-blister Samurai-themed miniatures for a a table top game that didn’t catch on (Legend of the Five Rings). He bought at least a hundred blister packs and let me pick and choose as many as I wanted at 50 cents each. These minis were top rate and a joy to paint. But I have to say that I got pretty tired of samurai after a while.
I think so. I started going to them in college. I may forget about them for a year or three, but if I have time to kill and there’s one nearby, I’ll check it out.
I mainly look for cookware and utensils. Very easy to find expensive pots and pans for under…$10.00. I also buy Stetson hats and long sleeve wool shirts. Always great deals.
I stopped at a garage sale later in the day and didn’t see anything I really wanted. Then a big box caught my eye. It was sealed with duct tape and had a label (dirty movies $500).
The sale was run by an older woman who, it turns out, had recently lost her husband. She was selling his clothes, tools, knickknacks, and porn.
I told her nobody would pay $500 for a box of DVDs sight unseen. She told me she was too embarrassed to allow people to look through the box. I offered her $20 and she was relieved to have me take the box.
We participated in SantaCon that year. I wore my Santa Suit and had a pillowcase filled with DVDs that I gave out to bad boys and girls over 18. It was a huge hit.
Years ago I found a top of the line George Foreman Grill, a large one with removable cooking surfaces, and waffle making attachments. I don’t remember what I paid for it, but it was a bargain compared to a brand new one. And then I turned around and donated my old waffle maker and small Foreman grill, both of which I’d gotten as gifts in college. I hated the old ones because they lacked the removable cooking surfaces which made them a pain in the ass to clean. With this one I can just remove them and put them in the dishwasher.
I’ve found a couple of great All-Clad pans, which retail for $300+, and cost me $6. And even if they’re warped, All-Clad will replace them for free.
A beautiful men’s cashmere topcoat, still had the tags, $15.
A down-lined (removeable insert) overcoat on clearance for$1.
I wanted to try an air fryer at the beginning of the air fryer craze. Picked one up at Goodwill for $10.
StG
nvm…xx
I don’t have any excellent “this is worth a lot more than I paid” finds. I am still kicking myself over not grabbing a Care Bear I saw last time I went to Goodwill.
But one time I needed specific shirts for a job I was doing - I think either white or black polos, lightweight, size 3X - and I actually FOUND some, cheap, at the first store I checked. It’s hard enough to find specific big-sized clothes at retail stores, and I didn’t want to pay too much for this temp job (dishwashing). I was, and continue to be, THRILLED.
My dad found something like that. Paid a little more but it was still a steal. Eight years later he was buried in it.
In the days before bedbugs became an issue, we bought a big, study brown sofa that was in excellent shape from a Goodwill. It was old-school, with inner springs in the cushions. We used it for years, but our dogs loved it as much as we did, so it eventually became perfumed with eau de la pug and we could never get the smell out. It eventually went to the dump. I miss that sofa - it was big and comfy with good support and excellent for napping on.
My Brain hurts when I imagine trying to shuffle these.
The cards are made of ordinary cardboard, but with a thin wire in them. They’re easy to shuffle and handle.
In my 20s and 30s I bought a lot of vintage clothing. One of my favorite shops was called The Junk Store. I found lots of cool stuff there (and it was a block from Clancy Muldoon’s!), but not a ton of real bargains.
But I stopped at a thrift store in Venice (on Venice Blvd) in the early 80s and found an awesome wool suit. It had to be from the late 40s or very early 50s (prior to Dior’s New Look, for sure), because the jacket had wide lapels, a slightly nipped waist, and below hipbone length. The skirt had an inverted pleat in both the front and back that gave it an A-line silhouette, but with a bit of a swing. It was in a lovely bluish grey chalkstripe. There was a Bullocks label. It was $30 and fit like a glove.
The salesgirl said the owner was going to cry, because she’d been trying to lose weight to fit in it. I didn’t feel that bad. I wore the heck out of that suit (usually with a vintage blouse). I still have it!
For a while, a calculator collector like me could find some options besides the ubiquitous Texas Instruments stuff that saturates today’s market. The best one I found was a Hewlett Packard 15C for $5 at a Savers store. They go for $130 and up on eBay.
A bowling shirt with the name “Ed” monogrammed on the front. A friend found one with “Otis”.
Like another poster I found a beautiful cashmere jacket. It is an Italian label, not Armani or Versace, but still good. It was about $20. I also found several Harris Tweed jackets for similar prices. This is a fabric that just never wears out! Recently I have had some successes also with classical vinyl. Recent hits: a Sheherezade, still in shrink wrap, with Erich Leinsdorf, violin solo by Israel Baker, and a Sacre du Printemps with Karajan. Numerous Reader’s Digest LP and CD boxes – classical record collectors should not turn up their noses at this label – the recordings & performances are really good!
I agree about the Reader’'s Digest music. I remember a set my folks had title “Music of Faith and Inspiration.” Most of the music was Christian but I recall the Jewish “Kol Nidre.” There probably are many tunes for that, but when I watched Neil Diamond’s version of “The Jazz Singer” it is the one he sang near the end, during the Yom Kippur servise.
Pretty much every single piece of clothing I wear. Which is quite scandalous to my mother (in her 90s and still oh so propah…)
She still hasn’t learned to compliment my shirt without asking where I found it. (“Saint Vinnie’s, Mom! $4.97! I’ll bet a sweaty guy without a decent job wore it before I did…”)
I have a collection of about 100 flannel shirts from thrift stores. They’re getting pricey, though- they’re up to $2.25 at the usual place. Occasionally that store has a 99 cent sale on clothes.
I got a perfectly functional Sunbeam Radiant Control toaster from a ReStore for $4.00 and it works fine.
I got a call that requested my presence at a funeral. I looked in the closet and realized I had left my only dress shirt and decent tie at my other residence. Off to the thrift store I go. I got an L.L. Bean pinpoint oxford shirt ($2) with the dry cleaning tag still attached and a ($1) silk Zegna tie . Since they were there staring at me, I also bought two Revereware copper bottom stock pots. The total bill was $12 plus tax. I had no idea what a Zegna tie was until I looked it up online and found the exact item’s retail price was $195. I’ve begun looking through thrift store ties for similar buys since then, but have yet to score like that again.