Featured Man thrift stores piss me off

ya that kind of stuff doesn't happen here in my little city the only donations are from local folks and most have no idea of what they have or are giving away .most just don't want to deal with the dead parents stuff and give it away they don't want to have a garage sales or sell on feebay

 

we have habitat for hum .also but just household stuff and furniture no clothes . they get broken into it at least once a year seems like, it's on the outskirts of town.(which is about five blocks from me )

 

Yipes!
I'm due in there...but a dangerous place for me.

 

crime is on the rise here yes i'm afraid also ,with the oil recession and things falling apart here.i have had to take in a homeless man and his daugher ,friends of my sons .

 

Where are you?

 

I don't get it, Terry?
How can it be profitable to ship and distribute antiques and collectibles?
(I couldn't find what you mentioned on that page)

the dreck that's left behind - it's hard to comprehend what stays and what goes.

 

lloydminster saskatchewan canada's only border city pop.42,000 and dropping sk on right alberta on left white line down the middle

 

Terry, thanks for the link. I was at first surprised how many of those "stores" were in my area. I do remember stopping at one a year or so ago. NO incentive to go back. They had advertised as having furniture and I was looking for a small table. The place was IMO a mess with a few pieces of Goodwill rejects. A good example of a for profit junk shop.

 

"
Savers, a for-profit corporation, is a professional fundraiser in the State of Minnesota providing this online tool for use by Disabled American Veterans of Minnesota, a charitable organization located in St Paul, Minnesota, whose mission is to better the lives of Minnesota's disabled veterans and their families. Your contributions are tax deductible to the extent permitted by law. For items you donate at our Community Donation Center, Savers pays Disabled American Veterans of Minnesota 6.0 cents per pound of clothing and other soft goods, 3.4 cents per pound of miscellaneous household goods, and 3.4 cents per item of furniture or other large items. For items delivered by the charity to us, Savers pays Disabled American Veterans of Minnesota 3.6 cents per pound of clothing and other soft goods, 2.4 cents per pound of miscellaneous household goods, and 2.4 cents per item of furniture or other large items. - See more at: http://donatedavmn.org/#sthash.HZtRzVXZ.dpuf"

They get it for pennies or free. The foreign buyer pays the freight plus per pound.

It's like going to an auction where they pay you to take.

At the closest store they have several trucks being loaded for overseas all the time. There is more going in those trucks than goes in the store and the dumpster.

A while back they were looping a video in the store of their stuff being sold by street merchants in southeast Asia. Looked like far better merch than in the store.

 

I would think (or I would hope) they don't ship those truckloads directly overseas - they must sort it offsite - otherwise, they'd lose who knows what? jewelry, etc.

I'm too dense to see the foreign destinations... ? ok, found it:

Our unsold merchandise is shipped to developing countries to help supply economies with a steady stream of high-quality goods. Though we tag and sell items in groups according to item category, our resale customers require the bales we ship to be broken down and sorted according to ‘grades.’ Because of the sheer amount of volume we supply to developing economies, some international grading facilities (such as those in India) can employ between 700 and 800 people. These jobs enable community members to earn a living wage and reinvest their earnings into the local economy.

So they are sent to be sorted?
Sounds like a story for 20/20!

 

The local sorters save all the shiny new Chinese marked 925 jewelry. Anything that looks old goes.

Worthless Chinese plastic watches with dead corroded batteries go in the store. Any that require winding ship overseas.

Disposable Bic pens go in the store, fountain pens go to India.

 

Maybe it's my locale (Greater LA), but I do find great stuff at Savers - vintage jewelry, Chinese and Japanese decoratives and textiles, old wooden tool chest, furniture.

They do have batches of new 925 fashion jewelry, nothing exciting, but they have a fun pegboard wall of what they think is junk where I sometimes find cool stuff.

 

Yep - anything good vanishes. The peg board and "costume" jewelry rack in mine are the only places I find much worth buying. Well, except for fabric remnants, but that's another addiction.

 

Goodwills in my immediate area have no jewelry, so I get pretty excited to go into Savers! Salvation Army has a boutique, and has terrific sales most every day - they really want to move it - but it's a hot mess.

 

Better than the mess the local Sally usually gets. I've found a few pieces of gold in there by mistake in the last few months, but anything good is generally lucky accident. Sometimes they have nothing at all. The Goodwill here gets all modern stuff, and charges fat prices for it. They only get something good by mistake.

 

I went into a Savers for the first time last fall. I found several items that I thought were reasonably priced. While I was standing at the checkout, a woman came up to me and gave me her 30% off coupon that she received for making a donation. She was not going to use it and didn't want it to go to waste. I didn't even know that they gave coupons out for donations. The next day, I listed one of the items and it sold immediately for double the price of everything that I purchased so I can't complain.

I had no idea Goodwill paid their handicapped/mentally challenged help so little. The fact that they employee people like that is one of the reasons I liked to donate to them. Now, I don't feel comfortable about it.

.

 

My church has a volunteer clothes closet; we give stuff away once a month. I give most of my clothes and shoes to them.

 

the closest big thrift store for me is value village and it's in saskatoon 300 km east,or edmonton 300 km west i love to go to the east in sk they are not as picked through as edmonton an can actually find good stuff but one once a year or 2

 

I noticed prices at the GW stores doubled and tripled at approximately the same time compulsory medical insurance policies and prices took effect. So I'm pretty sure that is a mitigating factor. Expenses per employee have massively increased, so prices had to be increased to cover those mandated expenditures.

The private and charity junque shops manned by volunteers have stuck with more reasonable prices, I've noticed.

 

So that means now all GW employee's have basic health insurance...

That sounds like a good thing for folks on the lower end of the wage scale.