A Surprising Thrift Store Find

  So ever since thrift stores are now open again, I can enjoy looking around them again. So as usual I keep checking them every day. I lost my job due to COVID-19 and have all the time in to go to thrift stores again. So last Saturday, I went to the other thrift store, that isn't The Salvation Army. I wasn't hoping to find anything decent there but I did find something cool that I like.

My new Chevrolet Winner's Circle hat

  Ever since they expanded this thrift store, there are more rooms full of items to explore. For instance they have a room with a mannequin in the running position for sale. The mannequin takes the cake. No I didn't buy the mannequin. Seeing a mannequin for sale is just strange.
  Anyway I did my looking around and decided to check the hat rack. Usually this thrift store has a decent hat selection. The Salvation Army has been hit or miss with hats lately. While checking the hat rack, I noticed a hat on the bottom, it had the Chevrolet bow tie logo and Winner's Circle on the back. Could it be an authentic Chevrolet Winner's Circle hat like the race car drivers wear? If so I had to have it. I picked up the hat and indeed it was an authentic Winner's Circle hat. Best part was it was $0.99 and appeared to be unworn. So this was one of those shut up and take my money situations. I have a ton of hats in my collection. a good majority of them I don't wear.

The back of my new Chevrolet Winner's Circle hat.

  I already had a Chevrolet Winner's Circle hat that my coworker gave me when he was cleaning out his NASCAR collection. However that hat was an unstructured hat. It was a mesh hat which was a positive thing. On the other side it is an unstructured hat. I don't really care for unstructured hats. Although I do have a few in my collection.
  This new Chevrolet Winner's Circle hat has the textured Chevrolet Bow Tie logo. My other 2 Chevrolet hats don't have the textured bow tie. This one gives it the new modern look. I'm shocked that the thrift store didn't charge more for this hat because of how nice it was. Heck for $0.99 I'll take it regardless. I've beaten the eBay prices for it. Not that I was in the market to buy one on eBay. I wasn't. I do look up victory lane hats on eBay from time to time to see what's out there.

How The Salvation Army Can Improve Family Day

  If you happen to be a big thrifter like I am, then you probably know that on Wednesday's The Salvation Army has Family Day. Now on Family Day almost everything in the store is 50% off. However there is one little teeny weenie exclusion, a certain color tag is excluded. This week that color tag was yellow.
  This is what really annoys me about family day. The color tag that is excluded in the 50% off sale. The items that you usually really want on family day are the ones with the excluded color tag. This is really insulting to the shopper. I don't want to pay full price for the item that I want there. I want it to be 50% off.
  I like to buy a lot of clothing there to test my shop scissors on to see how well it cuts through them. As for the past 3 weeks of going to the Salvation Army every Wednesday morning has been a waste of time for me. I'm trying not to spend my money at thrift stores as much anymore but The Salvation Army's color tag exclusions on Family Day really ruin it for me.
  I see something really cool and nice and it's excluded this week. What a shame. I saw a few nice items this week that were excluded and it got me thinking why do I even bother coming here anymore? Recently The Salvation Army has become a hit or miss place anymore to find anything good. I noticed that their selections of certain items have diminished significantly. One of those items is men's hats. I've found a lot of nice sometimes brand new hats there in the past for really good prices. Sometimes I found them on Family day where the hat prices were the excluded color tag. That didn't bother me at all sometimes. It's the bigger ticket items or obscure things that I see that annoy me. They haven't stocked any new hats in about a month or two.
  Other things that irk me about Family Day is that they sometimes don't include furniture. That makes sense in a way. I would never buy a couch or a chair from The Salvation Army. My uncle swears off on going in there since he once saw them one morning spraying the furniture for bed bugs. My uncle has a nickname for The Salvation Army, he calls it The Bug Store since they spray the furniture for bed bugs like the Orkin Man.
  If the Salvation Army really wants to improve Family Day they need to include ALL color tags in the 50% off sale not exclude one color. It's that one day of the week that is like their Black Friday. It really couldn't kill them to include everything at 50% off since they all got the stuff for absolutely FREE OF CHARGE. It's not like they can take a loss on anything. Rant over.

My Greatest Thrift Store Find Yet

  Yesterday I decided to take a walk to a local independent thrift store. I have found great things there before. So I walk down and immediately look at the toys hoping to find something. All of a sudden I notice there was a bunch of WWE action figures. Jackpot! Anyway I told the lady who works there you are better selling them individually instead of one big bag of them. She took my advice and asked how would you price them. I sad around $2.50. She went on $2.34 somewhere around that. Anyway I ended up getting 2 Mattel WWE figures, Basic 2pack series 4 David Hart Smith and Basic Series 4 William Regal. You can't complain there.

Volunteers of America Thrift Store Review

  Today I had to go to a doctor appointment after my 8:00 class ended. So after my doctor appointment I had some time to kill before I could go home so I decided to check out this out of town thrift store. I never heard of Volunteers of America Thrift Stores before until today. I have to admit it was one of the worst thrift stores I have ever been in.
  Firstly the store had broken and ugly merchandise. I looked at some of the books and one that caught my eye looked like it was in excellent condition but upon further inspection the pages were falling out. Not a very good first impression is it? The books were located next to the toys which were a complete joke. All of the toys that were in the store were broken and or missing parts. in the toy section there was a bunch of elbow/knee pads and bicycle helmets that were in ratty condition. Not to mention there were about 3 scummy used hard hats. How's that for a turn off. I then proceeded to check out the media section which had tons of obsolete media formats, 8 track tapes, VHS and some crappy 12 inch vinyls which technically isn't an obsolete format. Now I checked the vinyls looking for bad album art and came across one that I believe was in Polish. I laughed and walked away. I then go looking for the hats. They did have hats but they were in somewhat ratty and the selection was lacking compared to others I have been in.
  Finally I went to look at the CDs which for some odd reason were in the front of the store. I think this had to do with theft prevention. The CDs were mixed in with computer games. Not very organized are they? I wasn't surprised that about 25% of the jewel cases were missing the front piece. One CD caught my eye. It was a score soundtrack for Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone by John Williams. I checked the CD for any scratches on it and what do you know, there were scratches on it. I put it back.
  This is one Thrift Store I won't come back to again.

A Froggy Thrift Store Find

  Today I walked down to my favorite thrift store and came across a froggy surprise. I was looking at the toys and saw on the top shelf a 20 inch stuffed animal of one of my favorite Looney Tunes characters, Michigan J Frog. Hello my baby I said in my head. I love Michigan J Frog ever since I first saw him as the Mascot for the now defunct WB Network. He was $1.95.

The Sopranos NASCAR Jacket

 Today I walked down to a local independent thrift store to see if they get anything new. I was there a few weeks ago and I happened to notice that there was a The Sopranos NASCAR jacket there. It was $20. I had to pass on it because I didn't have the money at the time. So flash forward to today, the thrift store was having a 50% off all items with a green tag sale. It was my lucky day, the jacket was still there and It also happened to have a green tag making the jacket $10. The jacket is an XXL and it surprisingly fits me even though I am an XL. It's nice and warm for my first NASCAR Jacket. I got a good deal on it because it retails for $129.99

An Official Thrift Store Find

  I had a dermatologist appointment today, and it was close by the Salvation Army Thrift Store. . It was not even a block away. Anyway. I looked around and first found a vintage die cast Air Products tanker truck. It caught my eye immediately but upon further inspection the cab was missing a tire. I looked around for it and couldn't find the tire anywhere. A major let down there. The truck would have looked great in my Pennsylvania tribute. Anyway I happened to stumble across a brand new without tags, Sunoco The Official Fuel of NASCAR hat for $2.99. I used to have a hat like that a few years ago, but the brim wasn't bent correctly and looked funny. So they had two new ones. I purchased it and was happy.

Today's Thrift Store Find

  After lunch today, I walked to the Salvation Army Thrift Store to look around. I happened to be checking out the CDs that were there and came across these 2 classic 1990s albums for $1.99 each. It just so happened that I recently found out what the title of this one song from the 1990s was the other day on the Music Choice 90s channel. It was Be My Lover by La Bouche. The disc has a minor scratch on it, not a problem since my speakers for my CD player are all static and choppy sound, I just ripped it to my Laptop.

  The second CD I found was This Fire by Paula Cole. another artist who had a few 1990s hits. I also recently found out what that song title is that Family Guy parodied for the Quahog Creek theme song, titled I Don't Want To Wait. So I only spent $4.24 due to Pennsylvania's 6% sales tax. So the Salvation Army isn't that expensive after all.

Adeventures In Thrifting at Goodwill

  Today, My mom went to a custom framing place to see the progress on the frame for an old picture was coming along. I had no interest in the framing place so, thankfully there was a Goodwill store right next to the framing place. I only had a few minutes to look around so I can't tell you what some of the prices were.
  The moment I entered the store, I checked the toy section first. I usually check the toy section first to see if there is any old WWE figures, or Jurassic Park toys, or Batman toys and Hot Wheels cars. Alas Goodwill had neither of those. What they did had that didn't interest me at all were used Barbie dolls for $3 a piece. $3 for a beat up used Barbie is way too much. Even if I were a girl which I am not, I would never buy a used Barbie for $3. I did see plenty of stuffed animals in the toy section. I did eye up a large Stewie plush, however due to time constraints I didn't check the price.
   I then proceeded to check out the book/video selection, and happened to see a plastic storage bin with old 12" vinyl LPs and a bunch of old 7" 45s on the table. I had no interest in the old vinyls. Again I didn't even look through them and check the prices on them mostly due to the fact that there is a record store in town that sells used vinyls for $1 a piece. Then I saw a bunch of old VHS tapes. There again I didn't even bother to check the price because I don't use my VCR much anymore. I skipped over the books.
    Next I went to the T-shirt section to look for old WWE and Nine Inch Nails T-shirts. Sadly there were none. I briefly looked over the jackets and windbreakers, when an Air Products windbreaker caught my eye. I would have liked to have bought it, but I didn't check to see if it was an XL. Finally I proceeded to look at my favorite things, Hats. There wasn't many hats there but two of them in particular interested me. The two hats were probably Pepsi employee hats. One was a green Mountain Dew hat with the 1980s logo, and the other was a gray unstructured Diet Pepsi Max hat. They were $1.99 each and both appeared to be new, especially the Mountain Dew hat because it still had that cardboard crown protector thingy in it. So it came down to choosing a hat and I eventually chose the Mountain Dew hat.
    When I went to the check out, I had to wait a few minutes for the cashier to notice that I was waiting to pay for the hat. The cashier was dusting off clothing racks. When she was ringing up my item, she spent around 10 seconds trying to find the price, I showed her where the tag was on the hat and paid for the hat. On my way out, I noticed a plastic bin full of mint in package McDonald's and Burger King toys. I briefly looked at them, and Walked out saying to myself I remember that toy I used to have it. Sadly I'm 21 and No longer collect Fast food toys.

Salvation Army Thrift Stores are Expensive

  Yesterday I walked to the Salvation Army Thrift Store to kill some time, while my mom was having a meeting for her birthday party. While I was looking around the store, I noticed things aren't too thrifty. For instance they had an obsolete Zenith floor model TV for $19.99. Yes an old fullscreen CRT TV that would give you a hernia when you would pick it up. $19.99 for an obsolete TV set is ridiculous. I mean who in their right mind would pay $19.99 for a obsolete piece of junk? I guess someone who really needs a TV set would pay that.
  Also I took a look at the used furniture and almost had a heart attack when I saw the prices. There I saw an old couch for $164.  Really $164 for a used couch? You ought to be kidding me. That's too much for a piece of used furniture. If I was on a fixed income and I needed a used couch, I could never afford $164 for a lousy pre-owned couch.
  This leads me to the next part of my rant, the used hats. Now I love hats. I have way too many hats. I took a good look at the 3 used hats and I can tell you that the $3.99 price tag for a scummy beat up baseball hat is way too much for a used hat. I shop at another thrift store to buy my vintage trucker hats that are new or are in like new condition and I pay $0.98 for them each. That's a big difference in price at a savings of $3.01.
   Now comes the toy rant. I also collect old action figures, and I usually look at the toys in any thrift store. The Salvation Army had 3 Hasbro Batmobiles and they were all broken in some way. One was missing a wheel, another one was missing a roof. and another was missing something that skipped my mind. Now why would a thrift store take broken toys? It baffles me. It's like that they want the kids who have to buy the broken one to suffer because they can only afford a broken used one. Another thing is I saw a 12 inch GI Joe with half of his arm missing. I was beginning to think why would they take a broken toy. I guess it comes down to you get what you pay for.
   The next part of my rant is the VHS Tapes. Now VHS has been obsolete ever since the DVD came out. The Salvation Army wants $3.99 for a dead format VHS Tape.  Seriously $3.99 for an obsolete media format? This is insanity. Why would they even charge somebody $3.99 for a VHS tape? I rarely use my VCR anymore, although I do have an old Panasonic Omnimovie full size VHS Camcorder. I don't think anyone still uses VHS anymore, its all DVD and Blu-Ray nowadays.
    Finally the Salvation Army thrift store is more of a heft store if you ask me. I say this because none of their prices are thrifty at all in my opinion. So go support an independent thrift store instead.