Gorgeous brand new Fossil purse for $4.25
Brand new Keen tennis shoes $10
Like new Dr. Marten’s $7.50
Tommy Bahama shirt $4
One of my favorites was a beautiful Liz Claiborne evening gown. It was deep purple velvet over satin, one-shouldered with a gorgeous rhinestone embellishment. Normally $6.99 but it was the half-price color of the week. It was too small for me, but I was able to pass it along to my husband’s cousin for her 10th anniversary cruise. She looked stunning.
I got myself a New York & Company suit something like 7 years ago for about $8. I don’t wear it often, but it fits me perfectly and has come in handy for job interviews. I also have a gorgeous J. Crew silk blouse I wear under it that was probably $5, and some slammin’ 4" peep toe heels that round out the look. I love shopping at thrift stores.
I can’t pick. There’s always something awesome. Just yesterday I bought a beautiful silk sleeveless blouse for a dollar. Pristine white, tags still in, no signs of ever having been worn, and just my size. A dollar.
I’ve also found quite a few lovely children’s coats - high end and hardly worn - I guess they weren’t the right size? Who knows, but for a buck, they’re mine! I’ve got lots of friends and family with kids, and it’ll fit someone.
Actually, if I had to choose, I’d say that the best bargains are for the fabrics and notions. I’ve bought soooo many articles of clothing because they were made of silk or cashmere or leather, and I cut them up and use the bits for clothing repairs, other clothes, or costumes. I’ve bought even more hideous articles because of their buttons or trim. When a yard of patterned silk or suiting would set me back at least $6 a yard, if not more, then a dollar or two for a full length skirt for a size 24 woman is a steal in comparison. Likewise, spending a dollar on a horrid blouse with between 7 and 10 delightful buttons is much better than buying them at a fabric store for a dollar or more per button.
And that’s not even getting at the super deals at the “stuff things into a bin and we charge pennies by the weight” store in the nearest real city. I make it over there about two or three times a year and am awestruck at what doesn’t sell at the actual Goodwill stores.
I’m a massive thrift store shopper
Here is my list
- two cashmere sweaters for under $10
- a 100% silk slip for 2 dollars
- A large collection of corduroy skirts for $15
80% of my clothing collection is thrift store finds
A torchiere style floor lamp for $2, looks good, burns halogen so gives plenty of light, that is still working about 10 years later. Never found anything I like as well in any regular store.
Roddy
p.s. not purchased by me but by my SO.
A few weeks ago I bought a really cute jacket for $3. I wore it to work last week and got compliments on it all day. Someone asked who made it and I had no idea so she looked at the tag. It just said Carlisle so I looked it up online and found out his jackets sell for around $500! Whoa.
Over the years I’ve picked up some very nice full length wool coats (I have five now) and the most I paid was $20. I pulled two out the other day to donate to a clothing room because I really don’t need that many. 
I’m also a velvet fanatic and I’ve amassed a pretty substantial collection. My friends make fun of me because I even lounge around the house in velvet. 
I’ve been thrift store shopping all my adult life. There’s nothing like the thrill of finding something really unique for next to nothing.
I don’t know what the situation is in the US (or UK or anywhere else for that matter) but our ‘Thrift Stores’ come under a couple of different headings.
Mostly, they’re all (called) Opportunity Shops and raise funds for charities.
Some are big-name stores, especially The Salvos who employ paid staff to not only sell the merchandise, but to sort and price it too. The Salvos are probably the highest priced (as a rule) of Op Shops, but high-end donated product is more often sold on the private market…thus you are less likely to strike a true bargain at one of their stores. Mind you, because of the sorting system, they rarely have true crap stuffing up their shops either.
The best Op Shops to visit are those that are run by a small local community groups or churches. The (mostly elderly) ladies and gents who serve there are volunteers, and they (like me) don’t know which labels are in vogue and which are just run-of-the-mill. So you might find a perfect $350 dress alongside a Kmart one with the zipper broken on the $4 Evening Wear rack. 
That being said, the very worst Op Shop in Melbourne (IMHO) is a very small church-based one in a fairly wealthy suburb (Caulfield for those in the know). Because their donations of clothes, homewares and jewellery are coming from the upper-middle class, they reckon they should price their merchandise accordingly. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to realise that much of their stuff is priced more than what I could buy it new, and is actually crap.
So they have shit like plastic necklaces for $10, and a dress-suit that might have been fashionable back in 1980 for $30. Old-lady blouses are a favourite, mostly around the $8-$15 mark. Books like ‘The Australian Women’s Weekly Cookery Book’ @ $20 and crappy paperbacks @ $4 each…it’s great fun just to wander about and marvel at their audacity! I just don’t understand why someone hasn’t mentioned to them that if they were to drop their prices to something more realistic, they’d actually sell more and thus raise more money for the causes they disburse their fundraising profits to.
And they’re rude old biddies as well.
I don’t know that it’s my greatest Thrift Store find, but I recently found a favorite game from my middle school years, the old Avalon Hill game Twixt, for $7. The game was in mint condition too.
I found an original Uncle Milton’s Ant Farm still sealed in a box, for a quarter.
I was going to use it for the office gag gift exchange, but decided it was too cool for that. Had it for 20 years now!
I’m a thrift store junkie, and buy all my clothes there. I have a bunch of Life is Good shirts that I’ve bought for a $1 apiece.
My favorite find was a 6" metal statue of Sideshow Bob. He separates at the waist to reveal a 2" knife blade.
Just yesterday I bought a Talbots white long sleeved blouse at Salvation Army. The tag was still on it ($59.99). I bought it for $2.00. It’s really pretty and fits me perfectly.
Recently, a vintage ladybug pull toy for $2. It’s probably not actually worth a lot more than that, but my son loves it. I hadn’t actually planned to buy it, but I showed it to him in the toy aisle and he pulled it around the entire store. It has antennae on springs, wiggly wings, a wobbly back end, and a string long enough to actually pull while walking!
Another favorite - Horrible ugly curtains I used to make a costume for Disco night at a bar; bell bottom pants and a halter top. I think I only paid $4. If I had gone to a fabric shop looking for similar weight, and quality fabric, I probably would have paid three or four times that per yard. An appropriate print probably would have been very difficult to find.
I HATE HATE HATE going to thrift stores, but my wife and daughter love them. Her best find? A $200 bread machine, clean and fully functional, for $5.
I worked with a guy who bought all his clothes at the thrift store. He never paid more than 25 cents an item. Once he came in with a new shirt that he’d found in a bag of rags he’d bought for a quarter. “No holes.” he proudly said.
Boy, the thrift stores near me are expensive compared to the prices you people pay. There are a few ‘sales’ a year, and color coded discounts, but I generally pay about $6 or $7 per item, so it really has to be worth it. So I have lots of silk blouses, over a dozen cashmere sweaters (can’t have enough! only one or two have tiny moth holes, I wear those around the house ), a very nice black pantsuit, several beautiful scarves, and I’m always on the lookout for nice white cotton blouses. Long sleeves, short, or sleeveless, eyelet especially, I wear them as little jackets over a tank top in the summer. It makes me feel more ‘finished’. My last great find was a very nice, heavy navy blue poly knit sleeveless dress with a deep v-neck, it fit like a dream, just needed a bit of shortening. (It was by George from Walmart. But it’s nice!!!) And I was going to a wedding and found a pair of pewter high heeled sandals, real leather, from TJ Maxx (with the price sticker still on the bottom). The dress was about $8 and the shoes were $5. I had a gorgeous little cardigan from Lord & Taylor, and I bought a big honkin’ blingy rhinestone statement necklace for $30, which I will probably never wear again, but I don’t care. I had to have it!..My daughter worked in a thrift store one summer before college, she bought an enormous stuffed toy gorilla there, drove it up to school riding shotgun and ‘waving’ at other cars, lol.
I needed a sweatshirt to wear at the beginning of a marathon last month (it was a cold morning). The idea is that I could take it off and throw it to the side when I got warmed up after a couple miles. I found a kick-ass Villanova sweatshirt for $4, and I don’t think it had ever been worn. I didn’t even go to Villanova and have no particular affinity toward them.
This was fucking awesome.
A pair of signed Madeleine L’Engle books (Wind in the Door and The Young Unicorns) for 99-cents each.
And guess where major marathons take all those cast-off sweatshirts and such? 
It’s the Circle of Thrift, man!
Almost too many to mention but I’ll pick a specific one.
A costume jacket from Ragstock many, many years ago. It cost $12, which at the time was a lot for a student to spend at Ragstock. It’s short like a waiter jacket, green with black lapels and an attached vest front that is yellow with black pinstripes. It totally defies fashion and has a ton of style.