Are thrift stores getting more expensive?

might also be a product of being owned by Walmart. Who knew? I just learned this the other week. I always knew they weren't a non-profit, but I hadn't realized they were now owned by Walmart.

Really!? I had no idea.

How does that work?

You want the full rant? mebbe not.

They get volunteers from the charity sponsor to make the calls. They collect the donations. They sell the stuff. They give the charity a small percentage of the after-tax profits. Given their excellent book-keeping skills, there are usually tiny after-tax profits to pay a percentage on. Eventually, the board of the charity figures out that their volunteers are being taken advantage of to make money for a for-profit company and VV needs to find a new charity to hook up with.

I've always wondered how they've consistently made a good profit, while having almost no after-tax profit. I hate VV with a passion.

I could (and have) ranted about them for hours. They give non-profit charity thrift shops a bad name. Hate VV. Hate it. I won't donate anything to them - and I regularly donate a lot of good stuff to thrifts.

We used to have a poster from western Canada who worked in one. She used to post about how they ripped staff off on hours and $. Hate VV.

I just learned about the Walmart connection about 10 days ago. I'm not sure if it was recently bought out. It does explain where some of their new goods come from.

Time for me to hit good will again... it can be a tad time consuming, as I bring scads of stuff and then look at the store. So, when I do, I'll be back with an opinion. I don't suppose they'll have a souffle dish..

Locally, the Goodwill and Value Village have competing 50% off days once a month.

Weird.

I've never received a call from VV and ours never has new stuff.

Our Goodwills do have new stuff.

I'm going to take a closer look. Thanks for the head's up.

Goodwills traditionally get their new product from factories, whereas VV new product often comes with store tags already on.

One of our better Goodwills here (from the perspective of a shopper), is on the edge of a small industrial area which includes a couple of clothing manufacturers. When the manufacturers have their bi-annual warehouse sales, leftover product is donated to Goodwill in exchange for a charitable donation receipt. They also actively look for stores that are closing down and offer charitable donation receipts in exchange for the balance of the store contents. I got some great Danish clogs through one of those deals - they'd picked up the contents of a small importer's warehouse.

Twenty-five years ++, when I worked in the vocational rehab department of our largest Goodwill, we got a donation of all the product left over when a tuxedo wholesale/retailer closed down. Tuxedos from the 1950's, 60's and 70's were in every Goodwill retail location. Just about everyone in Toronto seemed to have baby blue ruffled tuxedos for Hallowe'en that year.

ok - on the changing prices thing - I've noticed that the better furniture at craigslist is comparatively lower in price than it was a year ago

Describe the dish you are looking for. Chances are BBB has at least two of them in her kitchen cabinets and can spare one. It will be one less item I'll have to lug up to the Goodwill.

Laughs, I have to say that crossed my mind after I posted.

I'll have to figure out the size, as I don't know by looking at size and guessing quarts, so I'll be back in a few minutes with an approximation.

I had a typical william sonoma souffle dish for a long time, and managed to break it before I moved - a crushing loss as I'd so enjoyed making the joy of cooking blender cheese souffle (recipe is here on a2k) as any fool like me can do it, given it has bread in it. (I've probably still not gotten over a friend of my husband's from a theater group, that we visited in Ventura, who, while we were chatting, threw together a chocolate souffle. I couldn't believe how good it was and that she did it so casually.)

Adds, small ones cost an arm and a leg at a local grocery store (smiths) and they don't have bigger ones.. Well, my idea of an arm and a leg may be a lower amount that some would say.

Ok, I finally worked out the size of my old le cruset pan (may nothing bad ever happen to it), which resembles the old souffle dish in memory - two quarts.

If you have an extra, I'll take it, for sure. Maybe we could trade..
I still need to bring you the photo with the Drosanthemum, which may or may not be what Thomas saw in San Diego. Or you could come here, and see chaos in action.