More Charity Shop Bargains for 2018 & beyond!

DD265

That's really nice Miro, though I don't think I'd have seen the potential in it's original state! It has come up beautifully

segapot

Hello all! New to this forum but long time chazza bargain hunter!

It's been so good to read about your amazing finds, after having a great 2017 and early 18 with lots of amazing clothes and knick-knacks bought in the charity shops I found since the end of last year and this month I've just not been able to find anything!

I work in a reasonable size town with quite a few charity shops and all seem to be slowly raising their prices, to a point where they're no longer bargains. I put my limit at £5 an item, maybe more if it's really outstanding, but when I have had a mooch recently a lot of the clothing is at least £5.50!!

I won't be put off though and will keep having a look to see what I find, although clothes purchases will be less this year as I am pregnant and probably won't be able to fit into a lot of my previous bargains soon :rotfl:

I did find a card game called "Exploding Kittens" for 99p today, on Amazon it's sold for £20! Plus about 4 pregnancy and parenting books yesterday which came to £10 total (including 2 hefty DK books). So with those buys and reading this forum I am inspired again :T

CAFCGirl

segapot wrote: »

Hello all! New to this forum but long time chazza bargain hunter!

It's been so good to read about your amazing finds, after having a great 2017 and early 18 with lots of amazing clothes and knick-knacks bought in the charity shops I found since the end of last year and this month I've just not been able to find anything!

I work in a reasonable size town with quite a few charity shops and all seem to be slowly raising their prices, to a point where they're no longer bargains. I put my limit at £5 an item, maybe more if it's really outstanding, but when I have had a mooch recently a lot of the clothing is at least £5.50!!

I won't be put off though and will keep having a look to see what I find, although clothes purchases will be less this year as I am pregnant and probably won't be able to fit into a lot of my previous bargains soon :rotfl:

I did find a card game called "Exploding Kittens" for 99p today, on Amazon it's sold for £20! Plus about 4 pregnancy and parenting books yesterday which came to £10 total (including 2 hefty DK books). So with those buys and reading this forum I am inspired again :T

I'm a complete lurked on this thread because I can live vicariously through other people's bargains and finds.
I live in a urban area where 5 towns sort of melt into one another and charity shops seem to thrive here. But, I fully agree with your findings that they're not the bargain hotspots of yesteryear here. I fully appreciate having to cover costs, collection servicetc if its offered etc but I do struggle to comprehend their prices for items that purchased new are equal ( atmosphere brand etc) or their refusal to adjust their pricing structure to reflect branding (e.g tops are £4 upward despite new in store being the same).

There's a couple that I generally find expensive so I now just get my kicks from browsing them on the whole.

I am so impressed with some of the finds people have posted on here

Miró

segapot wrote: »

Hello all! New to this forum but long time chazza bargain hunter!

It's been so good to read about your amazing finds, after having a great 2017 and early 18 with lots of amazing clothes and knick-knacks bought in the charity shops I found since the end of last year and this month I've just not been able to find anything!

I work in a reasonable size town with quite a few charity shops and all seem to be slowly raising their prices, to a point where they're no longer bargains. I put my limit at £5 an item, maybe more if it's really outstanding, but when I have had a mooch recently a lot of the clothing is at least £5.50!!

I won't be put off though and will keep having a look to see what I find, although clothes purchases will be less this year as I am pregnant and probably won't be able to fit into a lot of my previous bargains soon :rotfl:

I did find a card game called "Exploding Kittens" for 99p today, on Amazon it's sold for £20! Plus about 4 pregnancy and parenting books yesterday which came to £10 total (including 2 hefty DK books). So with those buys and reading this forum I am inspired again :T

Hi there and welcome to the thread :wave:

Sadly quite a few charity shops have closed down recently that I have frequented in the past. I always find the best prices are to be found in the community-type charity shops and the hospice ones. The big chains such as Oxfam, Mind and BHF have always seemed over the top price-wise. My local shops seem to be getting around to re-stocking lately after all the Christmas [STRIKE]tat[/STRIKE] bargains so things are starting to improve here....hope it happens around your way too!

Keep posting and good luck with the offspring

Pollycat

segapot wrote: »

Hello all! New to this forum but long time chazza bargain hunter!

It's been so good to read about your amazing finds, after having a great 2017 and early 18 with lots of amazing clothes and knick-knacks bought in the charity shops I found since the end of last year and this month I've just not been able to find anything!

I work in a reasonable size town with quite a few charity shops and all seem to be slowly raising their prices, to a point where they're no longer bargains. I put my limit at £5 an item, maybe more if it's really outstanding, but when I have had a mooch recently a lot of the clothing is at least £5.50!!

I won't be put off though and will keep having a look to see what I find, although clothes purchases will be less this year as I am pregnant and probably won't be able to fit into a lot of my previous bargains soon :rotfl:

I did find a card game called "Exploding Kittens" for 99p today, on Amazon it's sold for £20! Plus about 4 pregnancy and parenting books yesterday which came to £10 total (including 2 hefty DK books). So with those buys and reading this forum I am inspired again :T

Welcome from me too.

We have whinges every now and again about the prices in various shops.
Our local hospice shop - 4 branches that I visit regularly - have become pretty expensive for ladies clothes, shoes, books and bric-a-brac but I did bag a bargain coat last week for OH (he's worn it every time he's been out so a very good buy).

I pick up some good things from our Air Ambulance clearance where everything is £1.00 but I'm currently busy selling stuff on ebay so am being very strict with myself.
I've made almost £300 net profit (after fees and postage costs) in 2 months, just 'stuff' that I know I'll never wear.

segapot

Thank you all for the welcome!! I just wanted to go back on my mini winge on items becoming more expensive, as I don't want to seem ungrateful to the amazing service charity shops give and the money that is being raised for good causes. I think what annoyed me today was seeing a standard grey jumper with foundation marks on the neck being sold for £6 or old Primark t-shirts being sold for more that what they probably were new!

I do wonder if they lowered their prices a little if they would sell more ... I certainly would buy more :rotfl:

Pollycat

segapot wrote: »

Thank you all for the welcome!! I just wanted to go back on my mini winge on items becoming more expensive, as I don't want to seem ungrateful to the amazing service charity shops give and the money that is being raised for good causes. I think what annoyed me today was seeing a standard grey jumper with foundation marks on the neck being sold for £6 or old Primark t-shirts being sold for more that what they probably were new!

I do wonder if they lowered their prices a little if they would sell more ... I certainly would buy more :rotfl:

I think we all agree about the great job that charity shops and their volunteers do.
A lot of us who post on here buy, wear for a while then redonate.
It's my opinion that the paid managers and area managers sometimes set prices that aren't realistic.
I was in a local branch of Barnardo's a while ago when a woman came in with a box of paperback books. She was told they couldn't accept them as they had too many already.
They sell books at £1.00 each. I remarked that if they had a clearance table with books at 25p each, they'd sell more and maybe people would redonate them thus increasing their profit.
The reply was "prices are set by the area manager".

I absolutely agree that if prices were cheaper they'd sell more.
I wonder how much stuff is sent for rags.

Towser

I just wanted to go back on my mini winge on items becoming more expensive, as I don't want to seem ungrateful to the amazing service charity shops give and the money that is being raised for good causes.

Same here.

I find our chazzers find their prices on ebay and try and make as much for their charity as possible. I hear the volunteers often talking about ebay. In fact one hospice chazzer has an office only for volunteers to ebay only.

Where the chazzer wins is you can easily check the quality and the fit. Chazzers you don't have to pay P&P either.

Where ebay wins is you can easily find what you are looking for. Unless a size 12 then there is more availability in the chazzer. I like natural fibres and find the chazzers are left with all the man-made tat. I think there will be a shift soon as I have also noticed where there were several chazzers they are not able to compete with high rents and have closed down. Leaving a ghost town.

Facebook is competing with ebay too as they don't charge a fee. I don't want my name on Facebook as my chazzing is my secret with my SIL.

Chazzers have different levels of shop. The High End stores for example who charge a lot and whatever they don't manage to sell send their stock to a bargain basement store. There is proper marketing going on even within the smaller community-type charity shops and the hospice ones.

Towser

I absolutely agree that if prices were cheaper they'd sell more.
I wonder how much stuff is sent for rags.

Unfortunately, in marketing this is not how is works. The managers almost have to be accountable for profitability per area square. This is because of the high rents that are charged. Someone will be along soon that can explain it better than me. This is how other retailers survive. They can't have a lot of cheap items with little profitability

I overheard one manager say"she looks at a couple of items in a bag and if it looks s**t she will rag the whole bag." This is a shame where the shop is not managed properly for the customer only. Maybe they don't have enough volunteers to make this practice happen. Also the opposite is true where they have lots of volunteers they can sort everything into high end and low end to squeeze most of the profitability out.

VfM4meplse

Had a completely non premeditated spend up at the large Sue Ryder today - my mum knew I was looking to replace my now knackered conservatory furniture with new, and suggested that I paid a visit having seen these at £10 each (sold in Ikea for £30 apiece):



And then I saw this on the way to the till (similar, but with a larger canopy and more ornate base and stem) for £7.50:


Decided I deserved a treat, and this was it.

Interestingly enough, we had a discussion about different pricing policies in South Essex branches. Market forces appear to be a significant factor, which made me very happy that this branch wasn't in the posh end of town