I miss the secondhand stores. They have them here (in England) but they are all tiny little places not worth taking the trouble to go to, unless you live close enough to walk to one, or something. Mostly they just sell clothes. There's also virtually no used book stores (and again, they are all small, except for one I found in London which is a long trip away). In the US most of them are huge places with all KINDS of stuff in them.
I did find a weird wooden beet, it has hinged legs so it's meant to sit on a shelf and the legs hang off. The beet has a somewhat disturbing face. It's one of the few 'weird house things' I have. (Another is a cute 2-headed dog stuffed animal. Cerebus? Although, he has 3 heads, maybe they just didn't have room.)
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Comic Talk and General Discussion *
Coolest thing you've ever found at a junk store?
I once saw a WW1 Australian army cavalry sabre, but it was $350. I would have bought it if I had the cash at the time. I've always regretted that I couldn't get it. It was a magnificent sword. :(
It depends where you go here, but people generally know the worth of the things they're selling and know what to charge, unless it's a charity shop- good Sammy's, Salvation army, etc. They just put silly low prices on everything.
The bastard second hand bookshops discovered the internet a few years ago, so they're not as good value as they used to be. Now they exist to make big profits on the the supplies of books people bring them for almost nothing. Bastards, bastards, bastards…
They used to be such great places to go. Now if you want books for good prices you have to go to the university book sales, and compete with the cheating second-hand bookshops that go there too.
We've still got a pretty good used bookstore here. It's got 3 floors and some really cheapo stuff. Especially comics since the store owner doesn't care much about them. Yesterday I walked up to the counter to see a guy trying to get the cashier to take more than the $10 they were charging for an old original printing Punisher comic. It's the only time I've ever seen a comic book geek acting like he was ripping off the store and feeling guilty about it.
Ha! It's the opposite here… You find an interesting forgotton paperback on the second floor, take it down to pay for it and the trog behind the counter wants to charge you MORE than what's written on the book, acting like you're trying to rip THEM off for a book I know full well has been there for at least 10 years gathering dust and they acquired for less than 60 cents originally. The dick wants to charge over $10…
Once the policy at most places was to charge 50%-75% of the cover price. Now what they do is charge 75% of the cover price the book WOULD have if it was a NEW published book. And for books they've seen have a bit more value on the net they'll be way more.
It gets so you get better value when you get them off the net yourself from the second hand trading sites, or try really hard to find a good second hand bookshop … There are some still about here.
i was a manager of a goodwill store here in austin, and i've seen ALL kinds of stuff the people donate! did you know that over 75% of items donated to thrift stores is unusable garbage. i mean literally trash (we've gotten bags of old apple cores and pizza boxes.)
i've seen entire vintage collections of star wars, he-man, g.i.joes (even the old 60-70s joes). some still in the packages. shrunken heads. first printings of classic books. old collector's editions of vintage gaming systems i didn't even know existed, still in the freaking box!!!
on the other side of that coin…..i've seen some stuff that i can't believe people would donate. these are a couple of the stories of things i've witnessed firsthand. the stuff that gets thrown out and the public doesn't know about:
one day this woman came in to the donation center with a box in her hand with some t-shirts. she handed the box to the attendant and said, "here you go. i won't be needing THESE anymore." of course we figured she meant the old t-shirts but when we went to sort through the items in the box….there was only s shirts and like 17 dildos.
on another occasion, this suit and tie businessman walks in in with this huge box. that this was REALLY heavy. so i helped him unload it and send him on his way. when i sort through the box, in the bottom there is this really heavy trash bag. i dump the contents of the bag onto the table…and it's used S&M gear. whips. chains. gimp mask. a**less chaps. the whole shebang.
now, i have no problem with a healthy m*****batory or healthy s*x life. whatever you gotta do to be you, that's great. but please…for the love of the matrix, why would someone donate that stuff to a thrift store? do they really think we could sell it? blech!! there's a reason we all wear latex gloves.
That's hilarious Json! lol!
Man that was funny! ^_^
It jogged my memory about the secondhand bookshop/warehouse that a friend of a friend used to own… Probably still does if he's still alive, but he was pretty old at the time. My friend worked there occasionally and I'd take time away from my studio to visit and have a game of chess or scrabble while we roasted there in the heat-
This place was in the middle of a light industrial area, with no trees. A moderately size warehouse with only a big roller door at the front so on the stinking hot Perth days you couldn't shut out the heat: when the shop was open the main door had to be wide open too. No one would come in for ages and ages and we'd be sat there surrounded by mountains of books and shelves arranged in a twisty labyrinth which you could literally get lost in and have to forge a way between shelves into odd spaces behind them in some cases, where you'd find interesting things that'd been lost.
Aaaaanyway. Old Don used to get most of his books from small auctions in lots from deceased estates, so he collected other interesting things as well: Beautiful silk Chinese scrolls, a marvellous old, but sadly moth eaten, silk top hat, old telescopes, bizarre old electrical medical devices… (a pair of very grumpy, very dangerous looking lesbian ladies bought those and strangely seemed to know exactly what they were for).
My best find were a pair of 1930's leather motorcycle goggles. The lenses are round so they look very strange.
When my friend was going through it all (I wasn't there at the time), he found a box full of large format signed and numbered photos that documented a performance by the German artist Joseph Boyce. He knew exactly what they were, even though Don didn't, but he was honest and told Don what they were and what they were worth, so they went halves on them and put them up for auction at Christies. I think they got almost $20,000 for them.
Oh, and the books were really, really cheap there too :)
Plus, if Don thought a customer was a bit of a wanker he wouldn't serve them and make them get out… Sort of like Bernard in Black Books, except for real.
I miss the secondhand stores. They have them here (in England) but they are all tiny little places not worth taking the trouble to go to, unless you live close enough to walk to one, or something. Mostly they just sell clothes.I assume you're talking about the charity shops where deceased old ladies leave their cast offs: admittedly, pickings are slim, but for the repeat attender, there are treasures to be unearthed.
Behold: The GRAIL!
The bastard second hand bookshops discovered the internet a few years ago
There are some pretty good used book 'recycling' sites out there. I use greenmetropolis.com (or is it co.uk?) which is a UK one. Most books cost £3.75 (shipping included, and the seller gets £3 of that) and then you can turn around and sell it on when you are done with it :)
Ironscarf- 'repeat attender' sounds an awful lot like 'repeat offender'…
I can't even figure out what that mug is supposed to be. Some kind of vagina face?
I can't even figure out what that mug is supposed to be. Some kind of vagina face?I hadn't actually looked at it like that: the mug is giving birth to another mug. Thrifty!
They were called Ugly Mugs and were a craze that never took off some years ago. The fact that they were all painstakingly hand crafted and completely pointless may have contributed to this.
I miss the secondhand stores. They have them here (in England) but they are all tiny little places not worth taking the trouble to go to, unless you live close enough to walk to one, or something. Mostly they just sell clothes.I assume you're talking about the charity shops where deceased old ladies leave their cast offs: admittedly, pickings are slim, but for the repeat attender, there are treasures to be unearthed.
Behold: The GRAIL!
Holy crap! I have your brother funny-faced cup thing! I had to scan it in because my camera isn't powered up right now, but here it is.
Donated sex toys and ugly hippie drinking ware? woooooow.
I, myself am pretty good at finding treasure. My mom is a shopaholic, so it's something I've taken away from her.
I've gotten things way cheaper than intended, new clothes for almost nothing, lots of books. You can also find a lot online. (dunno if that counts, sometimes ebay feels like a junk store)Lately my kick is electronics. Buy a broken system that would be several hundred dollars for like 20 bucks and replace parts/clean.
I have a Value villiage in my town and it kicks ass. If you`re not familiar with value villigae this is what it is: Peopl ebring used junk, clothes, shoes…etc to the store, and the store sells it for dirt prices.
At value vilage I got 2 awesome sports jackests (one looks like it`s made out of carpet) $7each, I got a red zipper tie (A tie you just zip on) $2, and a Cheeck and Chong t-shirt. My one friends got a leather trenchcoat that looks like it came straight from the matrix, my other friends got a Average Joe t-shirt (from teh movie dogeball), and a GTA vide city T-shirt. My firend also found a porno, but didn`t get it due to embarassment.
I also got this at a store that sells bongs:
One of my favorite bands, but thier shit is SO RARE! I also have 4 other shirts of thiers, but I had to order online.
did you know that over 75% of items donated to thrift stores is unusable garbage. i mean literally trash (we've gotten bags of old apple cores and pizza boxes.)
Wish I'd gotten interesting stuff when I worked at a secondhand store. Most of the stuff is just disgusting.
The clothes with hideous yellow stains, looking AND smelling like they found a wading pool of chewing tobacco spit and just flung themselves in it. The beaten-up toys with the remnants of body waste smeared on them were also a nice touch. One can't simply discard these things. One must consider the less fortunate!
One of my favorites was an older woman who dropped off a box of junk, like cassettes and such, and underneath it there were two of those decorative bottles filled with peppers in vinegar. Only there was just a ludicrous amount of floating mold in them. I imagine her keeping them in the kitchen; it's all she has to talk to. "How aaare you, Cecil? Growing nicely, I see. And your brother Algernon! Lovely."
did you know that over 75% of items donated to thrift stores is unusable garbage. i mean literally trash (we've gotten bags of old apple cores and pizza boxes.)
Wish I'd gotten interesting stuff when I worked at a secondhand store. Most of the stuff is just disgusting.
The clothes with hideous yellow stains, looking AND smelling like they found a wading pool of chewing tobacco spit and just flung themselves in it. The beaten-up toys with the remnants of body waste smeared on them were also a nice touch. One can't simply discard these things. One must consider the less fortunate!
One of my favorites was an older woman who dropped off a box of junk, like cassettes and such, and underneath it there were two of those decorative bottles filled with peppers in vinegar. Only there was just a ludicrous amount of floating mold in them. I imagine her keeping them in the kitchen; it's all she has to talk to. "How aaare you, Cecil? Growing nicely, I see. And your brother Algernon! Lovely."
HAHA!! it's funny because it's true.
the most disturbing thing i've seen: a really huge black trash bag filled with large stuffed animals. tigers, lions, and wolves. we initially started sorting them into the kids toys. the ones that didn' have the stuffing removed from the back parts of half of them making them look deflated. that's when i noticed all of the unfortunate child's playthings had a single bottlecap sized hole cut in their posterior. i thought the "yiffing" fetish was just an internet joke up until this point. we threw them all in the dumpster.
the coolest things i found, since this is about cool stuff and not workers' personal horrors, well i had to think on this for a couple days. i found the first pressing of "the clash - give 'em enough rope", the first printing of "splinter of the mind's eye", generation 1 "soundwave" and "jetfire" transformers in near mint condition minus gun. i also tripled my star wars figure collection over the years of working there.
the most disturbing thing i've seen: a really huge black trash bag filled with large stuffed animals. tigers, lions, and wolves. we initially started sorting them into the kids toys. the ones that didn' have the stuffing removed from the back parts of half of them making them look deflated. that's when i noticed all of the unfortunate child's playthings had a single bottlecap sized hole cut in their posterior. i thought the "yiffing" fetish was just an internet joke up until this point. we threw them all in the dumpster.
Oh god! o_O I thought it was bad to get ones with old crusty poo on them, but no, that's the worst. The real horror is when you realize "I held that innocently in my hands." Aside from that, though, it's actually fun to sort through things.
I found handmade knee-length skirts that were in the most godawful patterns possible, combined in layers that couldn't ever match (red with white polka-dots over red and white checkers, blue flowers over yellow checkers, etc). They looked like something people would have worn in a low-budget reenactment of a fifties era barn dance of some kind. I was like "Ah do declare, this heah is mah new wardrobe." Unfortunately, I was a little low on cash and couldn't justify buying them. :(
We also found a shirt that simply said "I HEART DICK." That was a great day.
I once found an old vinyl record of Skip James with a song called Devil Got My Woman that I just fell in love with. I think I must have heard that song 40x's that night… The next day I went back to ask the guy if he had any more but he said, "no," plus he turned out to be a perv… Long story short, I get on a bus never to seen again…
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