Featured Common Items Seen At Thrift Stores That Will Never Sell

Same here. Lots of younger people seem to frequent the thrifts. I've heard they like to purchase "unique" items that can't be found at every big box store in town. Amazing to see them buying boatloads of Pfaltzgraff and items that were incredibly common and worthless a decade ago but seems to have become a lot more scarce in recent years.

 

After 15 years of collecting I definitely look at thrift store goods much differently than I did previously. I grew up in a very poor working class household and thrift stores/rummage sales/yard sales were almost magical since we could finally afford to stock up on a variety of useful items. Estate auctions were the next step up, being able to fill my dad's pickup truck with all kinds of interesting box lots/electronics/furniture for $20-50. Now I've seen so much stuff practically given away it becomes just more "stuff" that has little value and nobody really wants.

 

Oh when you mentioned putting tags over marks - that's one of my peeves. If it is an item with an original label and they stick the price tag on it. Sometimes impossible to get off without ruining the original label.

I visited one thrift store, think it was OR. They put one shaker in one bag and the matching shaker in a different bag. So that you had to buy two bags to get the matched pair. I ended up buying 8 bags to get 4 sets of shakers. That I thought was really crummy.

 

When I was at one of our local thrift stores this weekend that supports an animal rescue I saw them opening up one of their big overhead garage doors in their showroom and wheeling out a large and very ugly hutch from the 1980's era to a waiting truck.

The particular hutch had been sitting in the furniture section of their showroom for at least 5 years and they had marked it down from $300 to $200 to $100 to $75 and then finally $50 in recent weeks. A young couple in their early twenties bought it along with a kitchen table that the thrift store had also deeply discounted due to it also being "stale" merchandise.

Glad to see them sell those items. Though for sure they would become permanent fixtures since they were so large and bulky and aesthetically hideous.


To add to the list in the OP.

5. Entertainment Centers: They are big and bulky and never seem to sell. A product of a bygone age where lots of storage space was needed to stash a mammoth monstrosity of a television and the associated electronics that went with it. Now with large flat screen televisions being much thinner, lighter, and being able to be mounted on a wall with minimal effort these entertainment centers have seen their usefulness fade.

6. Upholstered Furniture: Chairs, Loveseats, and Sofas. Unfortunately our area has a serious bedbug problem which likely scare many potential buyers away. One of our local thrifts has a whole section dedicated to the rattiest examples of these to be found in the tri-state area, they must have 30+ of them and I've never seen anyone looking at them or anywhere close to buying one. They just sit taking up square footage for years on end.

 

Monday and I can't go to any thrifts because Co-# has closed them in our area. And it's very, very hot here too [No/Ctrl FL, USA]. And 2 hurricanes/tropical storms waiting to hit us. So I'll get this off my chest instead.

To stick to the topic the subject is an item that should never have been in the inventory of this particular thrift shop, or any shop for that matter. It got one chance to sell, to the wrong person: my husband.

This is probably the ugliest experience I've had with a thrift shop, ever. After it happened I boycotted ALL thriftshops with the same name in the entire US, and still do.

How it happened: My [now, late] husband, then on disability but still able to get around, was out shopping for food in our exurbia neighborhood while I was at the office in the city.

He got the idea to stop in at a local thrift also, just to look around. He spied a khaki trench coat that he thought I would like, wanted to surprise me.

To him it looked good, he paid US 25.00 for it. Me trying it on at home found it way too small, very narrow in the shoulders in a 1970's style.

Not only that, what hubby had missed, was that a/ it was a man's coat (buttoning, people, will tell you), and b/ it was full of mysterious dark stains near the hem, especially in the back, outside, and on the lining. Like someone had not have time to get to a restroom it looked.

Hubby saw that and was heartbroken. I'll take it back, said he, tomorrow. As it turned out I was going shopping the next day, a Saturday so I offered to.

I thought maybe they'd be nicer to a woman who obviously got a gift she couldn't use. I was aware that returns were not approved but I hoped they'd see my good reasons.

They did not. NOT RETURNABLE. I nodded and agreed, suggested I just pick out something else for $25 that I could use?

NO WAY. NO RETURNS, NO EXCHANGES. The manager was a mature woman, just like yours truly. I appealed to her sense of fairness, pleading that my husband had not looked properly at the garment, not seen that it was a man's coat or the hideous stains.

She seemed to get a little less rigid and suggested that I "..donate it back to the shop."

I thought about for a minute and asked if I could have a donation receipt for tax purposes?

"No, we don't give those out here, this is a religious charity. A donation should be a true gift in the eyes of th..".

I stopped her there, scooped up the miserable garment and left. To think that she should force the same horrible item on someone else if she got it back made me gag! I couldn't even look at it long enough to put it in the trashcan and wait for pickup after the weekend. The coat went on a wood and debrise bonfire we were burning anyway that Saturday.

What did we do in those days without Internet when we wanted to complain high and loud?

Well, I was always against shouting from the rooftops or Neapolitan style, from a balcony, so I typed a nice letter without typos, telling them my story in chapter and verse, and addressed it to the national headquarters of the charity.

Did I get a reply? No, nor did I expect one. But guess what else I did? I told all my personal friends about my experience. The charity closed that outlet within the year. Probably not due to my complaint but, I have always wondered how many others also were poorly served there.

I won't mention the name but it's an international chain of charity shops and it doesn't have the letters g or w in it. And it's probably a very fine organization if they'd only hire people who would know how to run their shops with a little compassion whether religious such or not.

 

I would have added “awful art” but since hanging out here I know that’s not true. Live and learn.My grandmother always said that “every pot has a lid” (except in thrifts!)

 

I'm rather surprised by who it wasn't. Some places honestly don't take returns, but any reputable charity would exchange it for something of the same price. Defective merchandise is always returnable, and mysterious skidmarks are a defect if ever there was.

Dollars to donuts the kids were buying "mess-with-me"s as I call them. Things they could paint, stain, cut up etc and not worry they were damaging anything valuable. The only place locally that seems to sell upholstered furniture too well is the local ReStore.

 

I've seen bad art worth thousands, if not millions. As for the pots, the lid is in another branch of the thrift store!

 

My bad on semantics and I agree that “bad” art is a category-actually one that I collect. Let me rephrase that to “awful” art. I know of no “awful” art that’s worth thousands or millions. I’ll edit my other reply but I stand firm on the sentiment.

 

IOW none of mine will ever be worth the paint it's done with.(LOL)