Along with Salvation Army, they've increased their prices to the point where it's no longer worth buying from them versus surfing eBay or OfferUp for a good deal on stuff in considerably better shape.

I too remember the late 90s and early 00s fondly at the thrift shop. My childhood stereo systems were exclusively found items at Salvation Army (on Grand River, which had the biggest stereo selection) and my first few modems came from SA. It's something I don't think today's youth have available.

Printed t-shirts at my local Goodwill are more expensive than brand new ones at Wal-Mart a few blocks away. Goodwill seems like it's only a good deal if you're buying whatever higher end stuff they happen to have.

My home theater system has a $20 thrift store stereo coupled with $20 thrift store speakers. It's equipment that would have cost maybe $500 new. I also pickup up monitors, keyboards, mice, cables, and power strips there. Mostly what I get there are books. I like books, and it's a cheap hobby when you get 'em from the thrift store.

From the pawn shop I get laptops and webcams. Also lots of tools. I put together a toolkit for my car this way - cheap tools aren't a theft target.

I dunno, LGR on youtube seems to find a lot of cool retro tech there[1]. A lot of crap too though. Not American, so I can't comment personally.

1: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbBZM9aUMsjEM76RFMofB...

He does, but you have to remember that each 15 minute episode is recorded over a period of months (like 4-6 months) of him visiting several stores weekly. So it's not like you'll find anything interesting every time you go.

I'm lucky to live in Japan where we have a junk store called "hard off" that focuses on hardware. They always have some obscure interesting stuff, tons of Laserdisc players, VHD, HD-VHS, Famicom floppy drives, etc. https://www.flickr.com/photos/kalleboo/albums/72157719132609...

Hard off is really good, and there's nothing comparable in the US. You can pretty much get every recent model of cellphone, iPad, Mac, etc. in like-new condition, at a fraction of the price of new. The stuff in this photo album is the "junk" section at the back of the store, and it's still way better than what you'd find at vintage store in the US.

In general, vintage stores in Japan are amazing. I don't know how they manage to find such a huge quantity of like-new stuff.

Wow what a store. My bank account is thankful there's nothing like that near me

a gem: https://flic.kr/p/2kXgdbq

LGR needs to make a Japan trip when possible.

Love the coincidence of laying on my couch watching LGR on a Friday night at the very moment that I find a comment on HN talking about LGR.

I also miss those magical times. Part of the magic was haggling over prices since nobody actually knew if the electronics would work, or simply because you carted off several boxes of stuff they couldn't sell. I managed to explore a number of 8 and 16-bit platforms from the 1980's and early 1990's because of that.

Thrift stores were also a lot more tolerant of junk back then. If they could sell something, it didn't much matter if it was broken as long as the customer knew it was broken. They knew a lot of people were looking for cheap stuff they could fix, either for personal pleasure or to make a few dollars.

> Thrift stores were also a lot more tolerant of junk back then. If they could sell something, it didn't much matter if it was broken as long as the customer knew it was broken.

I suspect that thet haven’t gotten any less tolerant, just what people are willing to buy from them at a cost that covers justifies the inventory space given competition for the space has changed.

Isn’t it the lack of space/economics that is making them less tolerant of keeping junk around? Or do you mean something else?

There was some concern about liability. One of the shops I frequented in the late 1990's would only let customers who they trusted browse through their sorted junk piles. These piles contained things like bicycles, which had to be thoroughly inspected and properly repaired in order to be safe.

I also noticed a transition towards boutique style stores around that time. While the older stores may sell a box of books or bag of clothes for a few dollars, the newer stores would only sell items at their sticker price (or with a fixed discount during sales). Less product moved since people would only buy something when they felt it was worth the sticker price, rather than paying what they felt something was worth. The transition made space/economics more of a factor than it used to be.

Some of the old style stores still exist, but they are increasingly difficult to find.

Things are a lot harder to fix nowadays.

It was local to the area, of course, but in that time too, but the Boeing Surplus Store was a magical place for me as a young tinkerer.

I probably have a box or two of random interesting looking electronics I bought floating around with the hope to figure out how to make it blink again. Not to mention one of my first PCs being some random office worker's PC that had been upgraded.

I'm still bummed they closed it down.

Boeing Surplus Store felt like.... wandering into Doctor Who's garage. Yeah we came home with some plate titanium, giant sheets of memory foam that got repurposed on our boat, we bought a trailer designed to haul bar steel, then converted it into a canoe trailer for the local boy scout troop, my dad would buy brass bar stock and turn it into POG slammers on his metal lathe that he also got at Boeing Surplus. Just acres and acres of weird cool stuff.

That place was magical. Sheets of titanium, amazing industrial-strength steel scissors for a dollar, military steel desks, all encircled by those amazing paintings of airplane prototypes.

I remember trying to pick up a piece of stainless steel "pipe" there. The piece was about 18" in diameter, maybe 24-36" long. The "pipe walls" were nearly 2" thick.

At the time, I could lift one end of an upright piano in the sense of getting both wheels off the floor.

I had never experienced the sense of utter futility before trying to lift that pipe. The complete and overwhelming sense that I would never be able to make it move even 1mm off the floor.

V = pi r squared times height so figure about 3 times 18 squared times 36 thats about 35K cubic inches if solid, or 2 inch thick walls means subtract 3 times 14 squared times 35 thats about 21K cubic inches. So a good 14K cubic inches of stainless. Engineering rule of thumb to one sig fig (I mean we are assuming pi=3) is stainless is about a quarter of a pound per cu inch, so that pipe weighed about 3500 pounds. A good engineer should be able to do all this in his head; to one sig fig that pipe weighed about as much as a lightweight F-150 pickup truck (not the extended bed super crew cab LOL thats probably 5000 pounds)

World record squat lift was 1036 pounds as I recall. LOL No not my record, my heaviest set on Friday was 480 and 8 reps.

For a year or two Goodwill had an actual computer store full of random stuff. I bought a massive 22 inch CRT there for $50. SCSI drives, cables galore - there were lots of things that you wouldn't find on any other store shelf. eBay was a thing then too, but that store, along with the other thrift stores, was good for a thrifty find. Sometimes there was a profit to be made. Other times it was interesting junk. It was a bit of a low-grade thrill and cheap entertainment for the browser.

The goodwill situation today for niche electronics is actually better than it was back then, thanks to the auction site imo.

the volume/variety may have increased, but the value-finds have gotten much worse.

As a kid I used to frequent the Goodwill Electronics Waste store in Santa Ana, you could kit entire machines together for just a few twenties; the value of the parts compared to their once retail price was maybe 5 or 10 % of the MSRP even back then.

I went back two years ago to satisfy my nostalgia and found the place now filled with 3-4 year old product that hovered around the cost to buy the same parts on an online vendor of some sort, and any of the interestingly-old-but-useless equipment like old ISA video cards/early PCI stuff/AT keyboards/anything beige was marked up so huge by some staffer that mistook vintage for value that it was absolutely impossible to find anything worth buying.

Water damaged gameboy faded-grey cartridge? 200 dollars.

Pentium 3 e-Machine? 300 dollars.

480 line composite security camera with no power supply and no hope that it will ever do anything useful ever again in the future?

Does it have a beige or metal casing? 200 dollars.

I think I ended up finding some cheap molex-style 12v fan to buy for a few bucks (more than any online retailer, still), but it was mostly just a guilt purchase to help support the Goodwill.

I left incredibly disappointed.

There was a golden era around the 2000s where Goodwill was amazing for deals - then someone wised up on values of some items and they just went nuts on pricing, especially anything that looks "high tech" - I suspect overpricing computers and not selling ANY of them is why the Goodwills won't take any computers anymore.

So are the prices adjusting to the market? I'd assume the price would get marked down eventually to the point where they can move stuff to make way for other things that come in. While their cost basis is low, they still have to move inventory to be sustainable.

I just wonder if maybe there are a bunch of people out there willing to pay those prices for some reason.

Goodwill isn't part of a "market", it's a charity. As such prices aren't set rationally but emotionally.

The people giving away their time at the register are doing it to feel good about themselves, to "give back", not because they are interested in or have competence in retail. The product being traded between buyer and seller is smug narcissistic self-satisfaction and moving anything at all is irrelevant.

I've volunteered at a similar outfit as a driver and tried to offer some assistance with realistic valuation for the ikea shit that was wasting 60% of the warehouse, but it wasn't welcomed. $300 for a Billy is "reasonable" and it's for a "good cause".

People working the register at Goodwill generally aren’t volunteers, they are paid employees, though they are often paid less than minimum wage.

My case was probably an extreme example, Salvation Army (in Australia) was a mostly volunteer organization for the brief time I was there.

Problem is the same everywhere regardless of pay structure, charity is used to as a crutch to wave off all criticism, a lack of retail competence, and any willingness to learn.

There’s a big difference between Goodwill and Salvation Army. Salvation Army runs thrift stores to raise money to fund their homeless shelters and disaster relief efforts - thus they are generally staffed by volunteers. Goodwill’s charity is … running Goodwill stores. That’s it. They don’t donate money to anyone. They in fact pay their store employees below minimum wage, under the theory that they are providing “job training”.

They also make a big use of court ordered "volunteers". They might be a non profit but their regional directors are pulling in large salaries off an operation that runs essentially on free inventory and below market labor.

When MacKenzie Scott decided to donate billions of dollars to reputable charities, all of the Goodwills got million dollar donations and SA got nothing.

I’m sorry, what? What is their actual purpose then? How do they remain a charity if profits aren’t being used for charitable causes?

Having grown up in the UK I always assumed goodwill stores were just what we call charity shops over here, you’ll find three or four on most high streets, all run by different charities and staffed by volunteers with any proceeds going to fund the charity’s work.

“Paid less than the minimum wage” has been debunked and was referring to one Goodwill organization, employing extremely disabled people who were close to not being able to work. Cashiers are paid at least minimum wage, usually more.

Not quite. The link below is Goodwill’s official statement on the matter. In fact, as of today, “22 of the 151 local Goodwill organizations” make use of special Federal dispensation to pay at least some of their employees sub-minimum wages. Yes, they go on to say they are transitioning away from the program, but that’s far more than one Goodwill organization - and in the recent past, it was much more prevalent. https://www.goodwill.org/about-the-special-minimum-wage-cert...

Yes it is a charity, but when you walk into the store with money you are participating in a market. You aren't going to pay $10,000 for a broken Pentium computer. Goodwill is still trying to sell stuff and if the inventory doesn't move at all, they will lower prices. If the prices are high, it is because there are enough people willing to pay those prices to justify keeping them at that level.

> the volume/variety may have increased, but the value-finds have gotten much worse.

Yes, awareness of competing buyers (and better market access of the seller) erases arbitrage opportunities. Venues that price at a steal compared to the broader market are not in a stable equilibrium.

Bulk clothes that don't sell get turned into rags.

In my experience, they wind up for sale in street markets all across Africa for extremely low prices. In 35 countries I saw American clothes in HUGE piles for sale.. many still had the goodwill tag (or other donation brands) still attached.

I bought plenty of shorts and t-shirts from these vendors :)

Oh yeah, mitumba, something that has thoroughly wrecked African textile industries - hard to compete with "almost free"

Ironically, "fast fashion" may finally bring an end to this, since this low quality stuff in donated (and thus almost destroyed) form isn't worth being shipped over to Africa, whereas "fresh" FF clothing from Asia is as cheap as mitumba was before.

I'd assume much of that was new, as cloths regularly fail to sell.

I know some of it is preemptively-prepared clothing for things that don’t happen, like commemorating championship wins of teams that end up losing. The stuff for the finalists is ready to sell for the day the winner is decided, the actual winners stuff is sold and the rest is dumped overseas.

> the rest is dumped overseas.

Or worse, shredded outright. In Germany alone, 230 million pieces of clothing (or 10% of the year's offering) are shredded without ever being worn (https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article203216646/Bekleidung-H...).

Based on the condition, at least 99% of it was used, heavily.

One of my favorite used clothing stores is The Garment District in Cambridge, MA. It’s actually an outgrowth of a recycled fiber company that makes janitorial wiping cloths. The good stuff goes to the vintage clothing store upstairs, the somewhat-junky stuff goes to the “dollar-a-pound” floor downstairs, the leftovers get made into rags.

Goodwill (at least mine, there are a lot of them) does take computers, but because of data security they aren’t sold in stores. Most Goodwills sell computers on eBay or shopgoodwill.com after they’ve been wiped.

Is there a Goodwill-type organization that focuses on electronics that I can donate to? These days you need a phone or computer just to apply for a job, let alone function in society.

pretty sure you can go on craigslist and get nearly free stuff if you are in desperate need of a computer or phone.

Let's look at phoenix craigslist.

* Here's a guy who looks like he stole a truck carrying Dell Optiplexes, buried them in his backyard, and has now dug them up to sell for $40 each. He's got 50 of them! https://phoenix.craigslist.org/cph/sys/d/laveen-dell-optiple...

* Here's a Dell Inspiron for $35 ($20 without charger) https://tucson.craigslist.org/sys/d/tucson-dell-inspiron-146...

* Here's a Lenovo xc10 laptop for $95. Not a bad deal. https://phoenix.craigslist.org/wvl/sys/d/sun-city-west-lenov...

* Dell Latitude for $90 https://phoenix.craigslist.org/wvl/sys/d/sun-city-west-dell-...

Bottom line, if you are willing to use an old computer, you can get one for less than the price of dinner for two at Applebee's.

To be honest, I'm more interested in donating to an organization that targets people who need electronics, but don't have them or are underserved by the electronics they do have. Listing stuff on Craigslist or Ebay is going to filter for people or businesses who have the means to check the sites regularly, and the funds ready to purchase things on them.

That's fine if you're local but I hang out on the vintagecomputing subreddit and about once a week you see a horror story of a collector getting something from ebay and it's delivered essentially destroyed.

Oh, I believe that. I once ordered a rare book that was destroyed in shipping. It was terrible.

But with cragslist, you usually pick things up from the seller, as it's local. Ebay is a bit dicier.

This exists locally to me, you might have something similar near you:

https://www.freegeektwincities.org/

They've been great for both buying and selling. They take old cables that don't even work any more and recycle them for scrap.

I see a lot of people give these kinds of things out via online marketplaces either for free or for cheap prices now. In Ontario it seems like the popular sites for this are Kijiji and Facebook Marketplace.

it's more work, but pretty much any old laptop or phone you can sell on eBay. You can donate the proceeds if you wish.

Note that Goodwill is a charity in the same way that IKEA is a nonprofit. They take your stuff for free, and give you a tax receipt, but they don’t give any of it away. They sell it for as much money as they can in their stores. The “charity” part is that they provide jobs and job training … to the people who work there.

Goodwill is simply a way to launder your possessions to feel like you’re doing good, instead of throwing them in a wastebin.

To be more positive, look for organizations like local churches/synagogues/mosques, community centers or homeless organizations that will give your donations directly to people in need. This works well for clothes and home goods, not as well for e-gadgets. For those, you might consider selling them on EBay and donating the proceeds to a charity.

You have made a lot of repeat comments about this and a lot of it isn’t true.

Do they make a profit? If so, where does the money go?

Nonprofits can actually make a profit, they just can’t distribute it to its owners (usually the board of directors) as a dividend. Goodwill pays its executives well, roughly $1MM to many of its regional executives. Its primary charitable work is claimed to be hiring people who are otherwise unemployable, often paying them below minimum wage. Some of this is discussed on the Wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodwill_Industries

Not saying your larger point is wrong, but this schtick ("Goodwill pays its executives well, roughly $1MM to many of its regional executives") always annoys me. Goodwill is a large organization, and large organizations require experience and talent to run.

It doesn't matter whether you're talking about a large corporation, a government, an army, a charity, or even a church. It's not going to be possible to find people to manage it properly for $50K a year. Cutting corners when it comes to attracting and retaining qualified management leads to even greater waste in the big picture.

Agree 100%. You are 100% right, and I don’t think their executives are “stealing” money. I am the first to jump in and defend charities, like the Mozilla Foundation, or even Goodwill, who pay their CEO’s appropriately. So perhaps that part of my comment is a red herring. It’s just that Goodwill is extremely odd in that the business IS the charity. Most people don’t put a lot of thought into it, and assume that they are somehow giving all of the junk we drop off on their doorstep to needy people - they aren’t. Or that their thrift stores are earning them money off our junk to fund relief programs and feed the needy - they don’t do that. Their charity is … to pay people (generally not very well) to sort and clean all of our junk, put it on display in stores, and take our money for it when we buy it back. It’s just … weird. It does beg the question of where all the money goes.

it really depends on location. last month I got a brand new usb turntable (that had a goodwill sticker with a barcode, they knew what it was) for $9.