Thrift Haulz

[Badgermein]

I dunno about you guys, but I love thrift stores. Ya'll know that sweet, sweet feeling when you find a sweet, sweet deal. Or heck, maybe you got something that you didn't need but looked cool! We've all been there. Show off what you found! I'll start. Personally, I'm always on the lookout for weird or unique VHS tapes, games, monitors, that kinda thing. Can't believe I got that PS1 long box for 5 bucks, or that I found one at all.

[Cele]

I worked at a store like that, well it wasn't exactly a thrift store but I guess a bit similar. It was such a horrible experience I see nightmares about it still and I'm really trying to sell all of the "sweet finds" I made on there. xD This would include a photo album, a wall cloth, a whole bunch of Ghibli merchandise (No-Face earrings, a music box, the like), kitty paw half-gloves, a doll depicting a Central Asian woman, etcetc. I just want them out of my hands so they can't remind me of those horrible weeks.

However, I visited a real thrift store in another town recently and found a song book I've been already borrowing from the library :]

[TheFrugalGamer]

I worked at a store like that, well it wasn't exactly a thrift store but I guess a bit similar. It was such a horrible experience I see nightmares about it still and I'm really trying to sell all of the "sweet finds" I made on there. xD This would include a photo album, a wall cloth, a whole bunch of Ghibli merchandise (No-Face earrings, a music box, the like), kitty paw half-gloves, a doll depicting a Central Asian woman, etcetc. I just want them out of my hands so they can't remind me of those horrible weeks.

However, I visited a real thrift store in another town recently and found a song book I've been already borrowing from the library :]

I'm sorry you had to deal with all of that, Cele. It seems that some of these places are so cheap that it ends up being terribly hard on the workers, and I hate that, because I do enjoy thrifting. Some of the locally-owned and volunteer run ones in my area seem to be nicer to their workers and put less stress on them.

I used to find all sorts of PC and console games in mine, but those have gotten rarer these days. So lately I've been picking up DVDs and Blu-ray, since people have been getting rid of those in favor of streaming and 4k releases. I also found a bunch of VHS tapes at a local place recently--I picked up The Abyss, Stargate, and Jurassic Park the Lost World and I've been watching through them slowly.

[Badgermein]

I worked at a store like that, well it wasn't exactly a thrift store but I guess a bit similar. It was such a horrible experience I see nightmares about it still and I'm really trying to sell all of the "sweet finds" I made on there. xD This would include a photo album, a wall cloth, a whole bunch of Ghibli merchandise (No-Face earrings, a music box, the like), kitty paw half-gloves, a doll depicting a Central Asian woman, etcetc. I just want them out of my hands so they can't remind me of those horrible weeks.

However, I visited a real thrift store in another town recently and found a song book I've been already borrowing from the library :]

Jeez, wow, that's awful. I'm sorry to hear about that. I wish thrift stores, independent and corporate alike, would just treat their employees wit ha little more respect. Many of these stores are run by volunteers, or folks that barely get paid at all. And the customers too, I imagine some o them come in with crazy expectations. Glad to hear you found that songbook, though.

[Cele]

Thank you both for your words

[brisray]

Thrifting is so cool!

It's so good a few years ago we had to practically empty the house and garage into the back yard and go through our possessions and see what we actually wanted to keep. Anything we hadn't touched in years was given away again and the collection of stuff I meant repair or repurpose but never got round to had to go.

Most of the Christmas Village and my last little craze, 8mm film loop projectors, came from thrift stores.

Some good finds were made online from places like Shop Goodwill and Caring Transitions.

Caring Transitions is a little odd. They help people who are bequeathed things they don't know what to do with or from people who are downsizing to care or managed homes. I felt a bit queasy using them at first but I had a long chat with the manager of one of the collection points which helped. It's sad knowing how they came to sell these things but as the manager explained, there comes a point where people don't need or want them. Apart from some of the more valuable items, nearly all of it will end up in a landfill somewhere unless they can be sold. Not only that, the original owners get most of the money from what they sell, Caring Transitions simply get a percentage.

@Cele this is why I got out of service industries as soon as I could. You're stuck between two hard places, employers who don't care and members of the public some of who are complete lunatics.

[Frost Sheridan]

i visited a local thrift store this weekend and found an asus eeePC there for $15! it's a later model (a 1000HAB) with an intel atom N720 CPU, 1GB RAM, and a 160GB HDD. the soft-touch rubber coating on the lid is turning into goo (i was able to get most of it off with windex and rubbing alcohol so far), but the keyboard and display are in surprisingly good condition! i just installed a fresh copy of windows XP on it and gave it a cool guilmon wallpaper.

[Còbra!]

Last week when I was in Italy, I saw a "Mercatino" (their equivalent to thrift stores), and it had a bunch of VHS tapes. I got myself a copy of Braveheart. Would be good for practising my Italian.

[wygolvillage]

My thrift hauls are usually full of black clothing (it definitely makes it easy to shop for  ). There's usually a record and CD section at the huge local Goodwill but I haven't found anything cool in there yet. The neatest thing me and my girlfriend found last time we went was this pink octopus shaped mug where one of the tentacles was the handle. We also found a cassette recording device thingy that she considered getting but all of its wire ports were in a weird format and it would have cost an extra $50 to buy a cord to even just get it plugged in, so we decided against getting it.

I don't have any Cool Haul Pix but maybe I'll take one next time I go thrifting. It's been a little while since I last went there.

[lulu]

my last little craze, 8mm film loop projectors, came from thrift stores.

That's a cool find! I've been curious about 8mm film/projectors, I've banned myself from acquiring *any* new AV toys until I repair the stuff I have, but I'd sure be tempted if I came across one now that I found a good resource for information (your site). Unrelated but I went to an extreeemly underfunded school for a bit, and I'm pretty sure they used something like this even though it was already the 2000s, cool to learn more about the technology.

I don't have any photos right now, but my house is mostly decorated with thrift finds. Kitschy 70s stuff is my favorite. Maybe I'll come back and share some pics later.

[brisray]

Loads of schools used the projectors. After the sex industry, they became the biggest users of the film loops.

If anyone finds one of these things that needs a little TLC, the earlier models are easier to repair than the later ones. It's because the later ones used a cheap plastic cam to work the shutter gate and the heat from the lamps made them very brittle and destroyed them. I can't find a single supplier of these cams now, so am looking at 3D printing them.

The lamps have a life of only around 15 hours but no one ever used the projectors long enough to burn one out, so nearly all the ones I've got still work. New lamps are expensive, ~$100, so it's usually cheaper to buy a "new" old projector for ~$30.

[yungwake0]

My whole life it seems I've had a knack for finding old tech-related stuff (mostly books) at thrift stores. This is my most recent score:



The Beginning C book was just $5, and was actually written in the 21st century which is rare for me

The VB6 thing was only $3; I'm not sure what, if anything, I'll do with it, I mostly grabbed it because it was cool and all intact (manuals and everything!). If anything I think there's extra, because it all barely fits in the box, and if I'm not mistaken there's a normal non-upgrade copy of VB6 in there.

I also got a physical copy of this Creating Web Pages For Dummies 9 in 1 book some years ago, complete with the CD. The thing is long gone, because life happened I wish I still had it, I might have used some of the CD's contents on my website. You can find a PDF of it with a Google search, which I'll link here:

(note: I'm not sure how to get this to display as just a link and not a weird embed. My apologies)