What is your charity-shop weakness?

lostinrates

Jojo_the_Tightfisted wrote: »

We don't get anything decent like this round here anymore.

The buy to eBay brigade has put paid to it, along with the Mary Queen of Tat effect.

So now, anything of value goes to the dealers first thing before the shops open, then everything else is insanely overpriced - no handbags for £3.50, they charge over a tenner for a Primark plastic thing that was six pounds brand new - before someone split their hot chocolate inside it. And the rest of the time, you are being pushed and shoved out of the way by the obsessively greedy trying to snatch things out of your hands.

The luncay of this was clear to me ages ago...when in a lovely charity shop with nice stock, the silk scarves were being sold for £15 while outside on a stall the silk scarfs were being sold for £10.

Its something i have said before but its true that i think over pricing in charity shops is sad for more than one reason....when i was a kid we all dressed from charity shops, looking individual and creative, learning about what fabrics we liked, and what lasted well. My neices dress in identikit teen shops becuase its cheaper than the charity shops. . This of course also means that the wages etc of the stuff making the new tat is abysmal too.


I love a good charity shop but i find the boom prices hard to take.

dibuzz

It's rare I go into tpwn these days but when I do I always look in my favourite charity shop for books and take them back to re-donate when I've read them.

tiff

Well I could go on all day. My weakness is retro china/ceramics, glass candlesticks, vintage pyrex, vintage cutlery such as butter knives, jam spoons, serving spoons etc I also love furniture, the Emmaus furniture warehouse near me is the best. I decided to only buy second hand solid wood furniture. We were given a long solid wood table when my BIL moved to Ireland and I recently bought 6 G Plan chairs with nasty fag burned leatherette seats and had them recovered. £85 for 6 solid wood well made chairs (plus table but we donated that back), DH and I refurbished the wood last summer.

I recently got a fab white damask tablecloth, no stains or tears. Tablecloths like that are so expensive new and I paid £2.99.

I try to buy all my clothes from the CS, dont find many trousers/jeans in my size nor shoes as I'm a 9 or 10 extra wide.

Nice tip about Henley on Thames, my SIL lives there but somehow I dont think she would be too impressed with going round the charity shops, she is designer all the way (and can afford to).

tiff

lostinrates wrote: »

The luncay of this was clear to me ages ago...when in a lovely charity shop with nice stock, the silk scarves were being sold for £15 while outside on a stall the silk scarfs were being sold for £10.

Its something i have said before but its true that i think over pricing in charity shops is sad for more than one reason....when i was a kid we all dressed from charity shops, looking individual and creative, learning about what fabrics we liked, and what lasted well. My neices dress in identikit teen shops becuase its cheaper than the charity shops. . This of course also means that the wages etc of the stuff making the new tat is abysmal too.


I love a good charity shop but i find the boom prices hard to take.

I volunteer in a CS and my heart sinks when the manager prices certain items. Almost anything that comes from a house clearance will have an inflated price on it. She also wont put out ANYTHING that looks even slightly worn/tatty as she thinks it will make the shop look scruffy. So it it gets thrown out, which they have to pay for. She wont sell books that have yellowing outer pages, so those get recycled but we only get 2p per book!

I'm sure managers of other shops/charities are the same as they are supposed to get as much money as possible for each item rather than selling it cheap and getting a high turnover.

Surely though they have a moral obligation to recycle/sell items rather than just bin them?

lostinrates

tiff wrote: »

I volunteer in a CS and my heart sinks when the manager prices certain items. Almost anything that comes from a house clearance will have an inflated price on it. She also wont put out ANYTHING that looks even slightly worn/tatty as she thinks it will make the shop look scruffy. So it it gets thrown out, which they have to pay for. She wont sell books that have yellowing outer pages, so those get recycled but we only get 2p per book!

I'm sure managers of other shops/charities are the same as they are supposed to get as much money as possible for each item rather than selling it cheap and getting a high turnover.

Surely though they have a moral obligation to recycle/sell items rather than just bin them?

I can see you can't sell some stuff....but the rest makes me sad. I love well read books that fall open on certaon pages.

Culd there not be a bargain back corner, for example, away from the front.

The other thing that annoys me is when there is something great in the window and they won't sell it because its part of the window display. I have even offer to pay more than the price on two occasions in the same cs and been refused,:mad:

scrabbles_2

wouldbeqaulitymoneysaver wrote: »

Silk Blouses Silk anything and Designer Bargains. I have really nabbed some in my time. Joseph, Burberry Trenches x 2!!! Silk and Cashmere!! Believe it or not more MSE than inferior nylon numbers unless otherwise.
My home is poorly insulated meaning too hot in Summer, too cold in Winter so Silk and Cashmere are brilliant investments!!!
*Hides in Flameproof Shelter*

I absolutely agree with you! As I say, I can often re-donate a lot of what I buy, because as long as it is cared for it will last indefinitely. A leather handbag if well made and well cared for can out-live its owner. You could buy, use and dispose of a lot of carp ones during that time! And I have 60-year-old wool (at least!) charity shop blankets that are far warmer and nicer than cheap blankets and far more comfortable to snuggle under!

Jojo_the_Tightfisted wrote: »

We don't get anything decent like this round here anymore.

The buy to eBay brigade has put paid to it, along with the Mary Queen of Tat effect.

So now, anything of value goes to the dealers first thing before the shops open, then everything else is insanely overpriced - no handbags for £3.50, they charge over a tenner for a Primark plastic thing that was six pounds brand new - before someone split their hot chocolate inside it. And the rest of the time, you are being pushed and shoved out of the way by the obsessively greedy trying to snatch things out of your hands.

lostinrates wrote: »

The lunacy of this was clear to me ages ago...when in a lovely charity shop with nice stock, the silk scarves were being sold for £15 while outside on a stall the silk scarfs were being sold for £10.

Its something i have said before but its true that i think over pricing in charity shops is sad for more than one reason....when i was a kid we all dressed from charity shops, looking individual and creative, learning about what fabrics we liked, and what lasted well. My neices dress in identikit teen shops becuase its cheaper than the charity shops. . This of course also means that the wages etc of the stuff making the new tat is abysmal too.


I love a good charity shop but i find the boom prices hard to take.

Well, prices near me aren't so bad as all that, but it's still not unusual to see Primark / supermarket stuff for far more than it's original price. I don't know if it's just the ones near me but there seems to be no differentiation between stuff that's obviously good quality and stuff that's obviously tat.

Most of my generation gave charity shops a wide berth, at least in the town I grew up in - they were for 'skanks' apparently that never stopped any of the !!!!!y girls admiring my charity shop finds though! That was mainly because I had an older, wiser sister at uni in London, who taught me to always claim that the charity shop stuff was 'found on this really cool stall at Camden Market'

Many of the local stores are obviously picked over by the dealers and ebayers too - luckily my faves seem somehow to have escaped their attentions. It's why I'd never do it - dealers wreck charity shops for everybody else.

scrabbles_2

tiff wrote: »

I volunteer in a CS and my heart sinks when the manager prices certain items. Almost anything that comes from a house clearance will have an inflated price on it. She also wont put out ANYTHING that looks even slightly worn/tatty as she thinks it will make the shop look scruffy. So it it gets thrown out, which they have to pay for. She wont sell books that have yellowing outer pages, so those get recycled but we only get 2p per book!

I'm sure managers of other shops/charities are the same as they are supposed to get as much money as possible for each item rather than selling it cheap and getting a high turnover.

Surely though they have a moral obligation to recycle/sell items rather than just bin them?

I have argued this before. I have a hobby business recycling certain damaged and no-longer-useful items and it amazes me, many of the charity shops would rather bin these items than call me and keep them in their stockroom for three hours until I can come and BUY them off them. And I am in a position to repair and renovate certain of this product for them FOR FREE so that they can sell them at top-whack, but apparently it's not worth their while to give me a call, they'd rather pay to bin it.

BitterAndTwisted

Crikey! Even tatty old wood furniture can be sanded down and/or re-painted by those who care. People could take it away and feed their wood-burners with it if it's past "Shabby-Chic-ing"

JoJo come nawf of the river, innit. There's a fantastic British Heart Foundation store in Walthamstow right near the tube/bus station in the Wotsit Centre/Shopping Precinct. They only carry furniture and electrical goods and they deliver. I know they do north and east London but not sure about places farther and wider. The market in the High Street is worth a couple of hours of anybody's time at the weekend in any case. There's a really good trad pie and eel place there, too. Mash and liquor, anyone? And it's on the way to the big Oxfam on the corner.

I find the best time to hit the chazzas is during the day-time Monday to Friday. I have never, ever been elbowed out of the way or had anything snatched out of my hand. Perhaps I'm living a charmed life. But I'm sorry to say that I have seen mysterious-looking foreigners shoplifting in the MIND c/s on Tottenham High Road. Incomprehensible. Maybe they think we're all so very rich and that stuff should be free of charge for them only

tiff

lostinrates wrote: »

I can see you can't sell some stuff....but the rest makes me sad. I love well read books that fall open on certaon pages.

Culd there not be a bargain back corner, for example, away from the front.

The other thing that annoys me is when there is something great in the window and they won't sell it because its part of the window display. I have even offer to pay more than the price on two occasions in the same cs and been refused,:mad:

Yes, I find the window display thing bizarre. Their customer is there with the cash but they wont sell it until a certain day, what is the point of the window display then? A local charity chain is well known for that as their window display person only works on a certain day. We happily sell our window items and replace them with something else.

thriftwizard

I too used to volunteer in a "high street chain" charity shop, and the pricing structure was explained to me thus by the area manager: the big high street stores banded together & lobbied Parliament that the charity shops had an unfair advantage on the high street, as they often (not always) get a reduced rent and/or rates, they don't pay for their stock, and they don't pay for most of their staff. Therefore, they should stop undercutting "real" retailers & conform to "retail standards" or get out of the high street. Rather than face legislation & lose their best-paying locations, the charities decided to go along with it voluntarily. Thus, if they are on the High Street & want to stay there, they can't sell anything that isn't "fit for purpose," they are bound not to sell anything that mightn't be safe & they have to maintain attractive window displays & light & airy interiors so as not to bring the surrounding area into disrepute. The vast majority of them have a national pricing structure, so that if a dress, say, is fit to go on sale, the minimum price is £7.99 for a short dress and £12.99 for a long one, regardless of what it cost originally. Books take up a lot of staff time so many will only put out books they know will sell quickly, i.e. bonkbusters. There's often someone out in the back researching whether anything they've been given is actually valuable online, and anything that is will go to an auction house rather than be put out for sale in the shop, unless it's of local interest only & likely to fetch a higher price there.

I used to love charity shopping & feel that I was using my resources to best effect - I got a better deal than buying new, and often much more interesting stuff (which wouldn't even be put out now) and my money was going to help people or animals who needed it - but now it's only worth going to independent, local charity shops; sadly I often get better value in secondhand shops & at car boots now.