SoapZone Community Message Board

Subject:	Re: Re thrift shops, I think a lot of “entrepreneurs” who sell stuff online
From:	Wahoo
Date:	Fri, 26-Jul-2024 2:37:52 PM PDT
Where:	SoapZone Community Message Board
In topic:	☀️ Thursday~Friday~Weekend Chat Post 🥀 posted by Leia
In reply to:	Re thrift shops, I think a lot of “entrepreneurs” who sell stuff online posted by Kitchop

haunt the thrift shops and snap up the best items before any poor and working class people even get a chance to shop there.

I don't really have an issue with this unless it's the reason Goodwill is OK with overpricing their items. But I noticed on my last trip to Goodwill, T-shirts from unglamorous places like Walmart or Old Navy had gone up from $2-3 to $4-6. Now traditionally, clothing at garage sales aren't great sellers because people can't try them on. If you're selling clothes at a garage sale--not counting baby clothes, which are always a top seller--you do best when it's a coat or sweater that can be slipped on over whatever the browser is wearing.

I should also mention that I don't really know enough about ALL the different thrift stores. I was talking with Mrs. J at the garage sale about what she'll be doing with what doesn't sell and she was adamant that it would NOT be going to Goodwill. She doesn't seem to think enough of the profits from Goodwill sales goes to those in need; she also thinks Goodwill's CEO makes way too much for someone heading up a charity. I tried to find out more...I found an interesting Reddit thread about Goodwill that had a few former Goodwill workers posting about how little they got paid when they worked there (minimum wage was standard) and how the "job training" offered was often just a room with a computer you could use and a printer that would print off pages for you for 10 cents each. Mrs. J takes her unsold stuff to either Womansafe (a thrift store staffed by volunteers and known for giving almost all their profits to local shelters for battered women) or American Cancer Society's Discovery Shop.

Apparently, a fair amount of people who didn’t want to go back to an office after the pandemic are trying their hand at this now.

Not surprising. The Swiss Miss had a friend who would rummage through the crap sold at Krazy Bins (a deep discount store with literal bins you have to search through for stuff), buy a bunch of things and then sell them online for 2-3x what she paid. SM said her friend made pretty good money doing so.

I’m guessing that the organizations, like Goodwill, who run the thrift shops, realized who their new main customer base is (people who want clothes to sell not people who need clothes to wear) and the thrift shops raised their prices to what the market would bear.

In my area, the people I know shop at the thrift stores are definitely NOT doing it with the intention of reselling. But the numbers may be different across the country.

We didn’t dwell on it but it did cross our minds. I actually felt much less “safe” in my mom’s suburban Florida house than I do in Brooklyn. It’s just so isolating how few people we saw around. We went days without seeing another person unless they were a friend who intentionally came over. Most people there drive into their garage and then go straight into their house and never come out until they back out of their garage in their cars. We knew a few of her neighbors but didn’t see them much.

May I ask (and of course please feel free not to answer) why you felt less safe at your mother's house? I have some thoughts but they would be better suited for the PB or a PM. I would think being around less people would make you feel safer, although the fewer people around, the fewer people there are to help in a crisis. If they WOULD help...I'm thinking of Kitty Genovese and the bystander effect, or maybe "snitches get stitches".

That said, we swam in the pool at midnight without closing the sliding door to the patio. Oh sure, I checked for alligators before getting in the pool at night in the dark. And seriously, I am absolutely certain that, if we had locked ourselves out of the house accidentally, we would have been able to break in pretty easily. The house was never broken into while we were there or while we left it empty (of people not things) for 6 months before selling it. But the house across the street was burglarized while the woman was home sleeping. That said, we slept there for 5 weeks, often with the bedroom window open. Fear can be very subjective and irrational.

It can be. I'd worry a LOT more about stray alligators near the pool than a robber at a garage sale in broad daylight in a suburban community <g>.

We ended up spending our time foraging for sentimental items that we wanted to keep, reading my mom’s journals, going through and dividing up her music and photographs, reminiscing, etc. She had a ton of nice clothes. She was a real clothe horse who was still buying new outfits when she was 98. She had three closets stuffed with clothes, including one big walk-in closet. We didn’t even consider trying to sell her clothes. One day we invited a few of her church friends over to take all the clothes. Some were kept by her friends to wear themselves and the rest went into the church rummage sale. Easy peasy.

That's really sweet!

At the same time, we spent hundreds of dollars shipping some stuff home like my mom’s paintings (ones she painted, not just owned) and a huge model ship that my dad built that took up the whole fireplace mantel.

Costs that could've been offset by...having a garage sale 😁

For some reason, we both relaxed a lot once we decided not to try to sell.anything.

Then that was the right decision for you. Just like a garage sale is the right decision for other people.

No replies, 86 views

generated page in 0.010 seconds using 9 database requests (no reply links)

Message archived, no new replies.
back to topic list

SoapZone Community Message Board

Re: Re thrift shops, I think a lot of “entrepreneurs” who sell stuff online