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A fine day at the thrift store...
Found an unplayed [as box open but cards and bits still in shrink] Catan Card Game for $1.50. Already have a copy but couldn't let it just languish among all those copies of The Ungame and shit. Anyone coming to WBC can have it for a beer; otherwise, I'm just going to donate it to the WBC library because someone should be playing it (and, yea, I know there's a new version...but for a buck and a half....)
Also found a barely played copy of HABA's Socken Zocken, which my daughter has already fallen in love with [and is almost playing properly by the rules, which ain't bad for 3.5]. Along with a $2 Fisher-Price farmhouse/barn thing that makes noise and has become home to all her various little animals [and has seen Hello Kitty repurposed into a farm hand...]. Add to that a penguin [her favorite critter du jour] "sleep lite" [it's a stuffed creature with a built in LED and stencil-thing that shines stars on her ceiling in 3 different colors] for $1, and I'm the best daddy in the whole goddamned world as far as she's concerned.
Also found a half-dozen new [with tags] or nearly-so linen and silk shirts for an average of $6 per. Oh, and a full set of Craftsman metric crescent wrenches for $5.
Now that's a fine damn day...
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- Michael Barnes
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Every time I go food shopping, I stop by that thrift store (it's nearly next door), you never know what they might have.
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Chaz wrote: I really need to find a thrift store I can check into regularly.
I don't think it's worth going to one that's out of the way. 99 times out of 100 it's nothing but crap, so not worth the gas or your time. I only have so many finds because there's one pretty close to my work and it gives me an excuse to leave to office at lunch.
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bfkiller wrote:
Chaz wrote: I really need to find a thrift store I can check into regularly.
I don't think it's worth going to one that's out of the way. 99 times out of 100 it's nothing but crap, so not worth the gas or your time. I only have so many finds because there's one pretty close to my work and it gives me an excuse to leave to office at lunch.
True to a point, but I think it *really* depends on where you live. DC metro area is big money, which often means you get top-dollar donations. $100+ silk shirts, often with tags still on 'em, and custom made shirts and suits are not at all uncommon. I've picked up a shitload of nice stuff at the dozen or so thrift stores right off the Beltway in MD and VA.
I've told this story here any number of times before I believe; but as far as games go, over the course of about 3 years, I made at least $9k flipping games on ebay that I picked up at thrift stores, yard sales, and off [generally] local Craigslist. Shit, I probably made $800 just selling *scrabble tiles* to scrapbooker/craft art types. It made my return to the hobby completely budget-neutral. I think I turned over the entire Avalon Hill (including the Hasbro stuff) product line at one point.
When the real estate market blew up a few years back, the thrift stores went with them in a lot of ways. The quality of donated material was crap and there was a lot more stuff getting trucked in from other shops in the big chain thrifts (Goodwill, Unique/Value Village, etc.) and it was your run of the mill dreck.
I've hit them regularly over the last 3 years to pick up baby/toddler clothes [I'm glad someone buys this stuff new, but I see very little need to do so] and always hit the rest of the aisles. Quality of clothing picked up again to "pre-bubble" quality fairly quickly; but it's only in the last 6 months or so that I've seen the rest of the stuff really start to ramp back up.
Picked up a Clue Master Detective as an upgrade for my house copy for a buck and a half a couple of days ago, too. Good game and, when I was regularly selling, a huge cash cow. It was pretty common and always a regular $50 seller. (the LOTR Risk with the cool metal One Ring was the big 'un. I flipped at least 8 copies for anywhere from $60 to $110 each--never paid more than $7 for a copy. God that was a ridiculously easy sell....)
I got out of selling a bit before the lean years because Ebay made it damn near impossible to be profitable as a low-volume seller or on low-margin items. Before they acquired Paypal and basically tripled total end-to-end fees, it was worth picking up a $1.50 copy of some OOP party game (Wise or Otherwise, What Were You Thinking, whatever that charades game was with the "movie clapper"-timer thing--that was an ENORMOUS seller right around Xmas) and flipping it for $20-$30. Now, it's not worth the hassle unless it's $75+ seller.
But I'll always pick up a hobby game for a couple of bucks, if only just to give it away. Hell, secret Satan is coming, after all...
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