Featured The 'good old days' at Goodwill

We were dusting yesterday and I started remembering where we bought some of our items.The group of vases & the Chinese candlestick all came from Goodwill 5-10 years ago,$2-$5 each.Times have most decidedly changed-this is why we used to shop at GW- now it's just another 'drive-by',not worth the calories,muscle strain (or aggravation).
1st Pick-Bronze & Alloy Ikebana Vases
2nd Pick-Chinese Candlestick
Accuracy of attribution may be incorrect (feel free to correct).

 

There haven't been any Good Will stores here for decades. Back in the 70s or 80s, the staff at the local Good Will tried to form a union and the operation shut down. There are mainly charity thrift shops here with the Salvation Army being the largest. Last thing I bought was an Ikea plant pot for $2.50. Now I have to find a plant to go in it whice will cost me way more than $2.50.

 

Most of our nice,true non-profits closed before & during Covid.G'Will closed most of their small (uncurated aka low-price) stores and built brand new from the ground-up Good Will Superstores-4 times the square footage & price.No more Salvation Army,St Vincent,Discovery Shop,nada,nada & no-way-jack.
Now the only 2 independents left are Val Village & Red,White & Blue-so all our fine crumbling city's 2 million pickers hit those 2 stores.
I don't know if GW's on the NY Stock Exchange-but it sure aint a non-profit.

 

the one , far right , is delicious !!!

 

Yes,I love the sculptural purity of the forms.We'll occasionally go to an Antique Mall,and I'll see one ($30-$70 or so),and my sweetie will give me that look (-don't we have enough ?!),and i'll hear the James Bond theme in my head-'The World Is Not Enough !'.

 

You exactly described the inner workings of the thrifts located in the city I'm from! We had a RWB that was the best, but it was a for-profit store. I don't really care if thrift stores are for profit or not. I'm sure GW will never have a ticker symbol, why should they want to share their profits with investors? They already get free money daily through donations. I don't see anything in it for them to go public that they don't already have full (un)fair advantage of. Mostly I feel this way because people don't realize GW is a for profit store and they perceive they are helping the needy, which GW never wants to correct this falsehood. We only have a couple of GW supercenters now and the prices of the clothing and stuff is very high, close to retail.

 

From the internet: "Less than one-eighth of the company's profit goes toward its charity work. Goodwill sells free goods at a profit, but less than one eighth of that profit actually goes to the job-related programs they market as their primary pillar of charity work."

Debora

 

Overpriced,overcurated,and barely-paying the less fortunate,the place nauseates me-this is truly dark and sad.

 

We have one Goodwill, but it is no where near here really and I think I might come out and find my car stolen. There was a gw in Bellmore, but that closed years ago.

We have church thrifts, some great, some terrible.
American Thrift is out here, but it is mostly clothes and overpriced.

Bezo's ex gave a lot of dough to Big Brothers Big Sisters Charity recently. They have thrifts here but quite a distance to get to when gas is pricey. I do use them to donate to as they come and fetch it for me which is easier.

My local thrift was a gold mine till new management came in. Last time I was in there, they wanted $5 for a plain used towel.

 

I'd love to see more real charity shops around here-true community services.Locally based-places that benefit Home Hospice,Meals On Wheels,Visiting Nurses,Senior Resources,Food Banks,etc-maybe the rents got too high ?
Lots have disappeared.
There's just too many serious pickers & too few venues.I think lots of our 7 day a week pickers are really trying to supplement their incomes-Seniors buying meds and filling in what the free food pantries don't supply.
The post-Covid hangover,kinda like a post-war economy.

 

I used to have a 2nd hand store a couple of miles away......it was in a middle to to low middle class neighbourhood ...
got some of my nicest stuff there before they moved 50 miles away to an upscale town......

 

...and turned into a Goodwill Boutique !

 

Wow, those are gorgeous!

 

Even Hoodwill screws up on occasion.Ive found sterling,fine quality items,etc but thats getting rare indeed. Also,they get millions from the govt every year. I loathe them but as others have said,they are about the only game in town anymore. So many thrifts closed during covid. I also experienced a situation like Pearls. Great store,great prices,then they brought some woman in who decided she knew better and they research everything now and price it ridiculously.Shes been there about a year,and I doubt they will last much longer. The times (and thrifts) they are a changin !

 

The small charity stores are getting extremely rare.

 

This has been discussed before, but the Goodwill outlets-- aka 'the bins'-- can still be the place of an occasional find. Not everything there has been sorted or looked through. I just never feel safe locking up my bicycle near any of them...

I still have my best luck at larger antique /vintage malls, with many different dealers. Most of the stuff is junk or is uninteresting to me personally, but there's an amazing amount of ignorance about many of the things I collect.

 

Pottery-Agree,the malls have a denser concentration of interesting objects. I get NA items locally like you.I guess when a professional dealer is pushing hundreds/thousands of items a year at shows,online & in shops-they're bound to miss some things.
Charity & Thrift stores were always a long shot.The thing useful about them times past is that goodie you got for a buck (not $10 plus at a mall). Sayonara to those days amigo.
PS-Be careful parking yr bike or car in front of any mall downtown (but u know this),and wear gloves at 'the bins' !

 

I wish I had an antique mall close enough to hit and of a size to bother. The Ill Will has gotten to the point that all I expect when I go in is a place to walk around out of the elements. THey don't even clean the bathrooms properly any more. I went from spending $80/week in there to $20/month. And now...good luck getting the twenty bucks out of me. They haven't stocked jewelry since before the Pandemic started, and now most wire shelves are pretty barren. Once in a while I'll find something, but it's a surprise when that happens. Silver? I can't even find brass!

The real charity thrifts are small, and one of them now has someone checking all the jewelry. All she puts out is junk, except for a small piece of sterling here and there. The bathroom however is clean. (LOL) The only hospital charity left.. haven't found anything in there in a while. They have "experts" looking things over too.

The only times I really hit paydirt, and have recently, are family-run tag sales and other sales where they just want the stuff GONE and don't really care. Those alas are few and far between.

 

In an alternate universe (the one w/ a fat pension !),I'd just drive between Oregon & Washington hitting big Malls & small stores-I could do it 7 days a week w/o getting too tired.
It's hard work,combing thru 20,000 sq ft of mostly junk. Davey takes '3 tonnes' to the dump,but does find some treasure in all that waste.
I retired a year & a half before My Lady's pension starts,so it's been a disciplined time financially (but wonderful being together 24/7,1st time in 44 years).
I think i'll just have to take the plunge and start selling stuff online & (& learn to 'zen out' when a buyer rips me off).
Got to clear some of this crap before we croak-make less work for Davey.
PS-Estate & Tag sales fun-but they're like trying to squeeze up to the stage at a Beatles concert.

 

The only mid-class folks who get livable pensions in the states anymore are government workers who started in the 70's or 80's.The PERS System in general pays a Sewage Tech (wastewater treatment worker) abt 10-15% more than the amount they made before retirement-75-85K a year.
The gov pension fund is also billions in the red and has been forever-it's a massive part of national debt.
In the 70's the union won a contract by which PERS workers were guaranteed a 10% or more return on their pension savings-even when the markets down by thousands of points-slick huh ?