I was thinking the same thing… If they are face to face, do they repel each other. Um what? Almost sounds like a gag gift.
I can only think of two things:
First, a neat tie with little kangaroos on it for about $3. It has a “made in Australia” tag on it, which is kind of cool too.
Second, I found a set of countertop canisters in a very specific Pfaltzgraff pattern that just happens to be the same pattern as the dinnerware set my parents received for their wedding ca. 1980. They still have most of that set and use it daily so the canisters – which they had never received with the original set – were a nice find.
I never go to thrift stores or garage sales because I both dislike shopping and intentionally prefer not to bring anything into my house that I do not really want. So, when I DO want something, I value my time and will pay a premium to efficiently buy exactly what I want.
For those of you posting your “scores,” do you factor in the value of time spent looking, including on trips that you do NOT find anything you want? Or do you find the activity of looking over thrift stores and yard sales pleasurable in itself, whether or not you find/buy anything?
I had one of those Minoltas! My father was a bartender at the Anchorage International Airport. People in a rush to catch a flight would leave all manner of stuff behind on the bar. He had to turn anything in, of course, but after 30 days he could claim it. The Minolta “spy” camera was one. He also scored a Zeiss-Ikon Contaflex 35mm. It took me forever to figure out how to get the back of the camera off, as there were a few steps you had to go through in order to avoid exposing the film, which was loaded into a cartridge which served as the camera back.
As for me, there used to be a Salvation Army store in (I think) Fairfax, VA. That area had a lot of people with money who would donate things when they got dusty. As a result, there was barely used top-end furniture and the like in that store. I scored a whole set of Limoges china on one trip.
When I was still collecting coins, I was at an open air market in Bamako, Mali seeing if I could spot anything. One guy went rooting around under a counter and came up with a small pottery bowl. He dumped in on the counter, spiders ran away and dust billowed, and a pile of about 20 coins was revealed. Actual coins are not common in that part of the world. These were all 5 franc pieces dated 1938-39-40, and stamped Algeria. I haggled for one of each year and gave him about a dollar. Went home and looked in my world coin guide; turned out they were from French occupied Algeria and worth a fairly significan amout to a collector. Went back to the market and gave him about $5 for all the rest of them, which was quite a bit of money from his point of view.
At a garage sale I purchased a pair of golf shoes with spikes. I don’t play golf, but I wanted the shoes to use for aerating the lawn where I lived at the time. I wore the shoes one weekend and walked back and forth.
I paid $5 for the shoes. Two weeks later I listed them for $20 on Craigslist, thinking I could drop to $10 or $5. They sold for $20!
Yes, it’s often enjoyable seeing items from the past like grandmas crocheted bedspreads or dish patterns, childhood toys, books and games.
I found a poster that featured a fundraising campaign from the 2000’s with our local zoo. There were giant rabbits that area companies decorated and displayed throughout the zoo. The poster had all the rabbits and the companies and contacts who decorated them. I bought it because it had my husbands company and him and his team of designers credited. I picked up for my daughter for Xmas paid like $7 for it. Turns out it’s a collectors item listed online for $150.
My other daughter frequently finds super cool shit at thrifts in Chicago. Recently scored a vintage pair of Oxford Fluevogs in new condition for under $50. Silver buckles, steel toed super fricking cute!
Of course they do. They aren’t trying to make a living but it’s nice when something works out particularly well. It’s not my thing but I have friends who love it.
A Settlers of Catan game – the original – for $4. I don’t know what it sold for circa 1996 but the current edition (just Catan) retails for $50. It’s like new, too.
For a long time, I was unemployed and got a free monthly bus pass. Goodwill was on the bus route home from the day progrm I attended. Goodwill was also near a supermarket (In walking distance there is only a Russian market- great for Russian specialty food, but if you want a loaf of ordinary bread you must go elsewhere) and a Chinese restaurant I liked.
I greatly enjoy hunting for bargains for me and gifts for friends. I’m good at it too.
We don’t do yard sales anymore since they seem to be 90% kids clothes - though when my wife was reviewing toys, we had one every year, just before Thanksgiving, where we sold the toys she got and didn’t even open. (Sent without her requesting them, she was on the manufacturers’ list.)
We go for fun, but we both hate shopping in regular stores. Being retired I’m find with thrift store shirts. And I can feed my puzzle habit. Driving down the Oregon coast last week we hit some tourist attractions and some thrift stores. In a big down time, when hotels were hurting (don’t remember if it was after 9/11 or the recession) we stayed in the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco and went from there to a bunch of thrift stores.
Back when we lived in NJ my wife wrote for the Princeton version of the Chicago Reader. She had just hit the thrift stores to buy clothes for the kids, and her editor, who hated the Christmas madness, gave her a story about shopping at thrift stores - and put our kids on the cover in their nice thrift store clothes.
Thrift stores, and used book stores, are just fun.
There was a time it was an every weekend activity. Mostly antique furniture stores/warehouses and resale boutiques. Occasionally an interesting yard sale. Often shopping for stuff for the house to update or remodel.
Most satisfying purchase was a long shot but we kept looking for and finally found five matching interior wooden doors to replace the hollowcore crap. Solid wood six panel doors intact, reclaimed from some old house.
Also the claw foot tub we salvaged and had re glazed.
That’s cool if it’s really labeled spy camera because me and everyone I know called them spy cameras because of how many tv shows/movies used them for that purpose back then. Totally replaced by cell phones now but in the '70s and '80s these were required spy equipment.
I find the “hunt” pleasurable in itself. I only count a “score” as something that I get for a real deal of a price. I hate going out to look for something very specific. I never find what I want. I’ve found so many perfect things via serendipity that makes it a pleasant surprise sometimes. I’m more of a “journey” versus “destination” kind of person.
As a kid in the 70’s, my mother would take us to her sister’s house in Waukegan and we would go to Great Lakes Naval Base for the yard/garage sales Guys always getting new assignments, there would be like twenty or more sales. Young motu built quite a good sci-fi library thanks to those sailors.
In college, I got a WWII era (I think it had the year on one of the labels) wool Marine overcoat. Double layered, slightly oversized, so i could layer underneath it and it went down to my ankles. It was awesome, like wearing a warm tent. A very well spent twenty dollars. I used it a lot because my jalopy of a VW van had no heat. This was at the Maxwelll Street Market before it was moved and domesticated. That same trip to MSM, my room-mate found a signed copy of a Kurt Vonnegut book.
When I was in Mobile, AL, there was, I think it was A Daughters of the American Revolution or some such organization re-sale shop that had a lot of high end stuff. I ended up buying five or six suits from there for maybe twenty-thirty dollars each. And the ties, golly, I have probably close to a hundred ties, they were only a couple of dollars. I should probably go through them, some might have value.
After a cold winter of wearing my St. Vinnie finds, my students claimed they discovered one fact about my personal life: “Your favorite color is Plaid!”
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I got that call, too, while I was at an out-of-state conference. Stopped by Goodwill on the way, and bingo! I looked presentable.
I find it hard to imagine someone going to thrift stores and yard sales and not finding it pleasurable in itself, especially since there is no certainty that one will find anything worthy. Targeted purchases are done elsewhere.
I remember their tag line “made by the minds of Minota”
I look at all the old outdated electronic junk. and books …and the tales I could tell you about working a swap meet …
No, it’s not labeled “spy camera” anywhere on it. I doubt any of the Minox cameras were, either. But that is how the Minox cameras came to be seen, due to their frequent appearance in movies and TVs, as being used by spies to take pictures of secret documents.
This Minolta 16 II works similar to a Minox, with the action of closing and opening it serving to advance the film and cock the shutter.
Darn, that would have been cool. Probably would have been a good selling point too!
Thrift stores are really great for men’s shirts. A lot of retail stores ship their unsold goods to Goodwill and others. Too bad I can’t fit in men’s shirts.