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.

Another Great Vintage Thrift Store Find

  I love shopping at thrift stores. I am kind of semi retired from buying unnecessary items such as jackets and different clothing to test my shop scissors on. I do pop in thrift stores quite often enough to see a lot of interesting items.
  Yesterday I decided to venture to The Salvation Army. I didn't get a chance to get there on Wednesday so I decided to go on Saturday. My week was really busy so I didn't have time to go until Saturday. So I go inside to immediately look at the hats that they have. I like to see if they have anything new or interesting when it comes to hats. So I walk to the men's dept and look at the hat shelf and I immediately spotted a vintage US Mail winter hat. Yikes! This has got to be too good to be true. So I grabbed the hat and checked the price. It was $0.99! Well I know what I'm getting.
  I was dead set on getting this vintage hat. I needed it badly. So I looked around at other various things and saw some more hats for sale but they weren't worth getting. So I passed on them. I went to the basement section to look at the various stuff they had for sale there. I spotted a wicker shotgun thingy that was unusual. I didn't check the price but it was really strange to see that. I looked at the appliance shelf to see if that vintage check writer machine was still there. To my surprise it was still there. I wonder how long that will rot on the shelf. I have a vintage check writer that I found in my attic so I have no need for the one at The Salvation Army.
  So I ventured back to the main floor and purchased my US Mail hat. I did really good on buying this hat. I checked to see what people want for hats like this on eBay and they want $30+ for a hat like this. Some things that I have noticed about this hat is that it was made by Some's Uniforms in Paramus, NJ. The hat is also Union made by the United Hatters, Cap and Millinery Workers International Union, a defunct union. I'm not a big fan of Unions but I have to admit that this hat is cool. It's really a great piece to my Made in the USA hat collection.

Thrift Store Soundtracks.

  I am a huge fan of thrift stores. I love to look at the CD selections they have to offer. However, the one independent thrift store in town has a good selection of soundtrack CD's lately. On the other hand The Salvation Army has been lacking of any good CD's or a decent selection of them for about a good month or so now which sucks.
  Now at the beginning of the year, the last record store in my town closed up abruptly which doesn't leave anywhere in town to buy new CD's except Walmart which sells edited CD's. I'm in a rut since I will probably have to resort to buying CD's on Amazon now or go out of town to buy new music. Thankfully one thrift store has been good to me when it comes to finding CD's.
  I am a huge film score aficionado. My score CD collection overshadows my pop/rock CD collection. I have over 159 hours of film scores in my library. It's insane. Film score aficionado's are an astute type of collector, they prefer physical copies of scores over digital copies. I'm one of them in that demographic. Now onto the thrift store finds.
  As of recently it seems that the independent thrift store has been getting an unusual amount of soundtracks donated to them. The best part about that is that they were mostly film scores which is right up my alley. Now this thrift store charges $0.50 plus tax for a CD. You can't argue with that price. So when I look at the CD's I always check for the dreaded scratches that CD collectors hate. Fortunately I don't buy them if they looked like someone played frisbee with them.
  Now the past few times I've visited this thrift store in the past month or so, I've walked out of there with a bunch of score albums. My most recent purchase was the best one yet in my opinion. About a week or so ago I had to drop off something at my great aunt's house. She lives across the street from this thrift store. So I decided to do a speed run in there. I looked at the hats, and made a beeline to the CD's. I looked through the CD's and I had spotted some score soundtracks. Jackpot. I had bought at least 5 of them, I bought a Hans Zimmer, James Horner, Don Davis, Harry Gregson-Williams, and Carlo Siliotto.
  The one that took the cake was The Punisher score by Carlo Siliotto. Why is this soundtrack so important and unusual? Well for those of you who don't know your soundtrack record labels, it was a La La Land Records release. Why is this unusual? You never expect to find an out of print La La Land Records soundtrack at a thrift store ever. Never in a million years would I ever expect to find a one of their CD's at a thrift store. For $0.50 you can't go wrong with that. Now I didn't know it was a La La Land Records soundtrack until I got into the car and looked at the spine of the CD case and saw their name of my favorite record label there. I almost had a stroke on the spot when I discovered it was one of their soundtracks. The Punisher wasn't one of their limited editions of a few thousand copies to my knowledge.
  Some of my other soundtrack hauls have included, Backdraft, Matchstick Men, and Black Hawk Down all by Hans Zimmer, I also found all 3 Lord of the Rings scores by Howard Shore and Attack of The Clones by John Williams. I hate the Star Wars prequels but I love John Williams. His scores for the prequels were better than the movies.
  Whoever keeps donating these score CD's is my hero. They are the real MVP here. They share the same passion for film music as I do. If it wasn't for me these score CD's would have been sitting at that thrift store for a long time. I gave them a good home on my soundtrack shelf.

My retirement from thrift store shopping

  Well today it finally happened. I finally found the jacket that I have been looking to find in a thrift store for years now. What special kind of jacket is this you ask? The answer is the elusive Snap-On Tools jacket. I see tons of people wearing these jackets where I live. They are kind of like a Carhartt jacket in a way. They are super cool and, you usually have to buy thousands of dollars worth of Snap-on Tools to get this jacket.
  So today I happened to stop by the Salvation Army to look around for anything of interest. I looked at the hat selection which was super barren today. The hat selection is kind of crappy nowadays. I then detoured over to the toy section that happened to have 2 huge bags of toy cars. I looked over the bags of toy cars to see if there was anything in there that was worth buying. Sadly there wasn't any car that I needed out of those 2 bags. Some old lady in a wheelchair asked me to get her down a K'nex Faris Wheel that was on a top shelf. I said I would get if down for her and I did.

A jacket similar to the one I bought

  After I helped the old woman I decided I would look at the jackets just for the heck of it and it paid off. As I sifted through all of the jackets, I spotted a grey jacket with an American flag patch on the left sleeve, I thought to myself that this has to be a Snap-on Tools jacket. I picked up the jacket off the rack and saw that it said Snap-on on it. I froze up upon seeing a Snap-on Tools jacket. I saw the price which was $14.99 green tag. Pink tags were on sale today.
  I didn't want to take any chances on passing up this jacket since I always wanted one. My dad used to buy Snap-on Tools when he had his business, he never got a jacket though. I looked at the size tag of the jacket and it was a Large. Great, it's just my size. Just to be sure, I went to the fitting room and tried it on. The jacket fit like a glove. Great my wish came true. So I decided against buying those 2 bags full of toy cars for the Snap-on jacket. It never occurred to me to look at the price of the 2 bags of cars.
  When I arrived home from the Salvation Army, I told my mom of my final purchase and she didn't believe me since she knows that I will be there next week. As of this jacket find I can finally retire from shopping at thrift stores for the time being. I found the jacket that I've always wanted today. It was a dream come true. In the past I have found several different Snap-on Tools items at thrift stores, a red hoodie with the Snap-on S logo on it and a Snap-on camouflage hat with a tool camouflage pattern on it.
  So as of today I am official retiring from shopping at thrift stores. It's been an exciting run. I've had the wonderful opportunity to buy a plethora of good stuff. From an antique Tonka Jeep to obscure NASCAR hat's, to lots of wonderful CD's. and even a NIN Hat, and even some truck banks. Now it's time to say goodbye to the Salvation Army for the time being. It was a fun run.
  Will this be the last thrift store purchase in my lifetime? Probably not. I'm retiring from buying jackets. It won't stop me from buying CDs though. That's another post.

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.

My Greatest Salvation Army Find

Front of Card

  Today my mom was at a doctor appointment and I decided to take a walk to some of the stores in the vicinity. One of them was The Salvation Army. So I go looking for old action figures and I struck gold. No Scratch that. I struck Platinum. I found an old Jakks-Pacific 2 Tuff Bone Crunching Action 2-pack with Chyna and HHH. Best part is was that it was only $4 and the carding had minor shelfwear. I never find anything this nice in thrift stores. Since Mattel won't make a Chyna figure due to her making porno films now I couldn't pass this up for $4. I opened it up to display my Chyna figure next to my Mattel Divas. HHH I'm not so sure of what to do with him.
  The Triple H figure's headscan looks alot like Regis Philbin for some reason. I ended up giving the Triple H to my nephews.
 

Back of Card

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.

A Vintage Thrift Store Find

Fox Body Mustang

  Today I went thrifting again. This time it wasn't the Salvation Army, it was to an independent thrift store. I was looking at the toys, when a Yellow plastic car caught my eye. The car was one of those big indestructible sandbox toys. At First I thought it was made by Gay Toys, now known as Processed Plastics. To my surprise It was manufactured by Testor Toys, the company who makes the plastic model kits. I bought their snap together C-130 Hercules today at the Grand Opening of Micheal's Art's and Crafts. The car is a Testor ToysS series No. 1000. At first I thought the car was a late 70s to early 80s Ford Mustang or a some sort of Chevrolet. Well my first hunch was right, it was a 1979 Ford Fox Body Mustang. I could tell because of the wheels that the toy had on it were the same as a real 79 Mustang. I paid $0.95 for the toy. It will make a great conversation piece.  I'll post pictures when I get my camera charged.