Things you buy at Goodwill, thrift stores

I donate stuff to Goodwill. I bought clothes from Salvation Army once. There are two NYC thrift shops where I prefer to shop for clothes: a Jewish run housing charity in the Upper East side, Council Thrift Shop, and the City Opera Thrift Shop which is 3 or 4 blocks from the Manhattan VA hospital.

I don't bother with used electronics. Maybe one day I'll splurge on works of art or furniture.

I've only bought new drinking glasses from the likes of Fishs Eddy.
http://www.fishseddy.com/

I have bought starbucks mugs for $1.00 and sold them on ebay for $35.00 to $50.00, plus shipping. Not just starbucks mugs, others that are desireable.

Same with some high quality handbags. Bought for maybe $5, sold for $45.00.

I'm surprised tsar, that you don't buy more there, especially living in a city where I'm sure there's lots of cool stuff.

Unless it's a bookstore like Barnes and Noble or the BluRay section at Best Buy, I'm mostly a very impatient shopper.

Oh God yes, so am I.

Can't stand shopping.

That's the thing about items I buy at Goodwill, I can get them a lot faster than going to a retail store.

Walk in, and there's plenty of whatever I'm looking for. Grab it, pay a couple of bucks and get out of Dodge.

Well, for buy things I'm going to resell, that takes a little longer, but I look at that like working, not shopping.

We bought 20 old fashion champagne glass at the SAL for $5 to toast at the birthday party. Glass ones!

Great place to pick up cocktail glasses.

Our area only has a tiny Goodwill, and it is used mostly to take up donations which are driven over to areas that are more poor. Plus I am not a fan of GW at all, I think that they do a poor job at most of the things they do. Selling stuff that is worth $45 for $5 is routine GW incompetence.

However, I have in the past used thrift stores for clothes, kitchen stuff, books, furniture, and stuff to decorate cheaply with.

In our area we have a ton of places that deal in used clothes, and my impression is that they do a much better job of selecting and pricing than GW does.

EDIT: In our area Habitat for Humanity gets super poor reviews for much the same reason that I hate GW. That being said the idea of getting used home repair and landscaping supplies on the cheap has a lot of appeal. I would love to use thrift shops for this purpose.

that's why it's called a ******* thrift store.

if they charged $45 for a cup, they'd be a retail store.

around here, there's GW's that are in richer areas, you can get some really good stuff there.

There's racks of womens suits and little black dresses for cocktail parties, etc.

Plus, the type of people who buy a cup or handbag (which was probably $200 plus when new) for $45 dollars aren't going to go to a GW or Sallies to find it.

For a cup with some kind of logo they want to feel like they "found" something special on ebay.
For someone who'd by that handbag, I get that, because it's not something they can go into a GW and find.

Stuff like that? I don't look for it. If it's not going to take more than literally one minute of my time, I'm not going to go digging through 99% crap. Most of the stuff is worthless.

Sometimes though, some decent brand bag was just brought in, and just sitting there.
I don't think I've ever spent more than 10-15 minutes tops in a GW if I was checking to see if they had something worth buying for resale on ebay.

In any event, I found another type of item that I can buy a moderate quantity new, and make a few bucks, maybe $10 or so, on each one.

Anyway, like I said, I don't buy clothes there because I can't stand looking through racks of crap to find what I like.
However, consider my ex-husband. He basically wore polo type shirts each and every day of his life. He regularly messed them up. I could walk into any GW, go to that ever present rack of men's polo shirts, go to the size medium section, and pull out a dozen that looked new, in a variety of colors and buy them in 5 minutes.

I'll tell you what, if anyone is ever in a market for a bread machine, go to GW or Sallies, especially a month after Christmas when everyone who got one donates it.

Not in good, old Farmington you couldn't. There are men's shirts, pants, and jackets. Period. You want a particular size? Get yourself down to the ARC thrift store.

I've been shopping at Goodwill Stores and the likes most of my life.

I've always disliked what Australia has to offer as far as clothes go, to tight across the boobs, to short etc to start with and have had enormous fun mixing and matching clothes and being complimented on them.

I've purchased so many English fine china over the years, tea cups, beautiful glass salad bowls or cutlery, un-usual items. The other day I found 4 face-washer packets in various designs made to look like cakes, awesome.. $3 each.

I also go through those clothes and end up with 5 garbage bags full annually and re-donate them and anything else I no longer wear or use.

We can't sell electrical items here anymore via Goodwill Stores and I have to admit some of those stores now stock $40 handbags, new shoes, clothes, going away from the entire concept in my opinion more like a new and recycled shop with the new over powering the recycled.

Last week I found an M Missoni sweater - store tags in - at Value Village. My cost, after coupon, $7 Cdn.

The same sweater is on the Nieman Marcus and bluefly websites right now for $595 US. Still trying to figure out if I'm going to keep it.

Goodwill isn't as good locally as it once was. Some of the church-based thrifts are getting better donations now.

I don't thrift regularly, but I always find interesting/useful things when I do. Some of my better pieces of furniture came from Goodwill in the early 1980's. The only thing I really stay away from is appliances/electronics of any sort.

you ARE the twin!

"We" know that

One needs to pick through some crap there too, but no where near like it is at GW. Plus our Value village store is large, few trips end with nothing.

BTW: the kids are all gone, but thrift stores were sometimes great for halloween costumes. My wife and one of the kids are good at sewing, the kid actually designs, so they would buy stuff and alter it, netting a great costume for almost no bucks, American.

Mmmm, the business person in me says, sell it and purchase $59 worth of "stuff" and go back and donate that stuff to the same Goodwill Store and keep the rest and by yourself $500 worth of "something" .....

Thing is FS, if she sells it, like on ebay, she's maybe get 50ish dollars or less most likely.

(I looked, the businesswoman in me takes control too)

I already checked - the last similar M Missoni sold on EBay for $350.

HAHA.

You also have an advantage over me, it's 8am, I've been up since 5.30am, not thinking straight yet

Damn Ms Chai, the business woman

I have my own particular approach to clothing - I touch. I can go down entire rows of racks in less than 5 minutes - unless a textile feels 'right'. I only stop for good feeling fabric - then I look back at the colour - if fabric/colour appeal, I stop long enough to pull. Once I've pulled 5 - 10 pieces, I stop to check design/size/labels/condition. I do the same thing in regular retailers - I don't look, I touch. Much faster that way.

Then SELL it mama!