the ups and downs of my thrift store flipping...
I had time this morning and my tolerance factor was up so I ended up hitting all 6 of my metro’s active thrift stores (and 3 rummages) after dropping off a couple of scrapped out smaller CRT tvs at the city drop off area. I started off a bit after nine and ended up home after 12:30 and 36 miles duly noted for my taxes. 3 hours is about what my sanity can handle moving around the city on a Sat. morning.
At the Catholic thrift store (St. Vincent DePaul’s) that’s located on the north end in a lower socioeconomic area, I picked up 5 interesting baseball style hats for 50 cents apiece. I’ve done well on baseball style hats out of this store but a guy never knows. I’ll probably do 4 auctions for the 5 hats starting price of $3.99 to $5.49 for a pair of them.
The second place was a Goodwill on the west, northwest side of town, still in a lower socioeconomic area but probably a step up from the Catholic store. I bought a pair of little kid’s lace up leather uppers ‘Northwest Territory” China made winter boots for $4. They looked in really good shape. I donated a buck for veterans’ appreciation (or something to do with veterans). This store, opened for about an hour, was pretty quiet. I zipped across and down the street a couple of blocks and stopped at a local drug /general purpose store that has U.S. mail station. I mailed probably an early Iraq War desert camo Air Force E4 BDU long sleeve shirt with a couple of neat patches on it that I had bought at a rummage in the same area a couple weeks before. I paid an Abe for it and sold it for $9.99 to the only bidder.
I found 3 rummages in some nicer neighborhoods while heading to one of the main commercial drags of town. At the first place I bought a vintage GE electric iron for a buck. It’s missing a piece so I might see if I can take the cord off gently and sell that as a replacement part and then scrap the rest. If not it was a cheap gamble and probably still get a little ss out of it. At the last rummage the nice lady (I’ve bought some wildlife artwork there before) talked me into buying a “nearly new” Izod pull-over neck zip fleece shirt for $3. There’s a good amount of little lint pieces and some hair on this thing so I think she was bs-ing me about being “new” but it might sell for double+ my money or I’ll wear it, although I’m not a big fan of wearing name-brand logos on me.
The next 2 thrift stores I rarely go to and re-visiting them, I know why. The first was “Y-Buys” which appears to be affiliated with YMCAs but don’t know for sure if they are. This is located in a fairly busy strip mall on one of the main drags (its located in part of the building that housed a larger supermarket that tried entering my metro’s market about 20 years ago but failed to last 10 years). “Y-Buys” prices are all too high for me to make anything flipping maybe because they probably have to pay higher rent than the others. Fairly spacious and not over crowded so the passed fart and BO quotient was down compared to some of the others. I didn’t buy anything here. The other thrift I hardly go to is called “Nu2U” and it’s located in a strip mall on another main drag but not quite THE main drag as the just previous one. I believe this place is probably the most local store and seems affiliated with the area Reformed Churches. It’s mostly clothes and higher prices than Goodwills. I passed on anything here as well.
The second Goodwill I visited is located a block or so of THE main drag but farther east where it’s not quite as real estate pricey (its located across the side street dominated to the west by the local VW & Audi dealership and up the street from a tucked away nursing home). It was about 11:30 by now and everybody’s awake and shopping. A good number of squabbling little kids and immigrant families. I bought an older (early 1990s) geography board game that I thought the boys and I could play together although my oldest has now informed me we have another one of the same game that I had bought a while back (I hate when I forget things). Well, $2 lost. I bought a vintage rubber inflatable duck decoy for $2 that I had never heard of before. There were 2 more of these but passed on the others as the heads weren’t straight as the one I bought. Looked them up on eBay when I got home and might be able to get double or triple my money or maybe not. If not, I’ll add to my decoy collection. Glad to leave this store.
I made my way to the last Goodwill store which is located on the newer part of the east side of the city and nearly the closet thrift store to bedroom town. It’s the most spacious Goodwill and although fairly busy at least a person can move around decent. I’m starting to look around for some winter coats that I can flip. Clothing can be a gamble, sometimes good snags and sometime busts. I like to find full length women’s leather coats or fur trimmed or both, maybe because I had a great score of buying a lull length leather coat with black ranched fox trimmed coat for $10 that ended up selling for $62. But that isn’t the norm. I found a Japanese style (but made in Taiwan) little “urn” with a pair of golden pheasants on it. I thought it said $2 on the bottom and I have a bit of a Japanese collection going on and I’m sucker for pheasants so I picked it up. Found 2 women’s real fur trimmed (had seen so many older synthetic fur trimmed coats already that morning—as a trapper synthetic fur makes me puke, the silkiness of real fur holds up over time when compared to the fake stuff and real fur is naturally sustainable); one was a lighter “parka” trimmed out with red fox and the other was a darker coyote trimmed out heavier coat made in S. Africa. No price was on these and I figured I wouldn’t get them for $4 “light” coats but though they’d be $8 “heavy” coats so I was a bit surprised when the clerk wanted a Hamilton a piece for them because they were “winter” coats. I’ve tangled (nicely) with this guy before and pointed out the sign that said $8 but he flipped the sign around and in smaller print (and not noticeable if you weren’t coming up the aisle from the other direction) it said “winter coats $10”. So now these things become more of a gamble than I thought because I’ll start them off at $14.99. Still, I like the fur so I bought them but I won’t get sucked by their prices again. He also said he read “$3” on the bottom of my urn. OK, in the store light it could go for wither $2 or $3 (although it’ more like $2 at home) so I gave him this one. So $24 total (w/tax) and he cleans me out of my bills. Just change left in the pockets.
So, driving home, I’m in this medium funk spot of not being overly pissed (although my tolerance factor needs to be recharged) at the morning but not overly satisfied either. But maybe it’s the thrill of the hunt in finding something really good that keeps me going back. If nothing else, it keeps me out of the bars. Now I should go scrap something…
