Goodwill observations

[tz101]

Has anyone besides me noticed the general lack of classic gaming knowledge of the average thrift store employee? Now, before anyone bashes me for dissing the disadvantaged, let me also state that most charity thrift store employees I see look much better off than the handicapped people shown on their ads, but also please take my comments in proper context. All I am saying is that they need to maybe put a bit more thought in their pricing and system packaging practices as it pertains to classic gaming items. All would benefit from it.

 

For instance: I went to a GW today and bought a pirate plug n play system called a Maxx Play 85-in-1 system. From the Chinese sweat factory, it came as two controllers, one of which plugged to your TV via RCA cables, and the other which plugged into the first controller via a 9-pin Atari 2600 type plug. Basically, the first controller contained all 85 Famicom pirate ROM's on a chip and a menu system, along with a start and reset button. The second controller looks similar to the first, except for the different cable coming out of it. There was nothing more to this "system" as in a console. The GW had these two controllers rubber banded separately and priced at $4.50 a piece, and the proprietary battery pack was over in a bin of power adapters to be sold separately. I took the two controllers up to the register along with the orphaned battery pack, and the cashier proceeded to tell me that she would have to charge me separately for each item. I explained to her that it was all one game system, and she called her manager who promptly told me that the items were for separate sale. Now, come on: Controller one with the games on chip would work fine as long as it had the battery pack inserted, but controller two? Maybe I should have left that one behind since I don't play many two-player games anymore, but how would they have ever sold it? Probably would have sat around until they finally threw it out for the trash man.

 

Another instance: I saw a pieced out N64 system at another GW store one day priced for the reasonable amount of $15. Here is what it contained: one N64 console and its power pack. The top hatch where the memory pack goes had been removed and some thief had stolen the RAM expansion module. After looking up and down a few aisles, I saw the remainder of this system. They had two N64 controllers listed for $3 a piece, and a SNES/N64/Gamecube AV cable in the bin for spare cords listed for $1. The memory expansion module was nowhere to be found. Come on, why not package the entire system to make it worth somebody's while?

 

Repeatedly, I see PS1 consoles sitting on shelves with no cords or controllers, listed for ridiculous prices like $20. Then I go down another aisle and find the controllers and cords thrown in spare parts bins for separate sale.

 

Does any of this make any sense?

[seanhq]

It doesn't make sense and I've experienced the same thing at various Goodwill's. The only time you can tell when someone knows about gaming stuff is when they package it all up in a plastic bag and have it in the glass case, otherwise things seem to get spread around like you found.

[cybercylon]

None of your observations surprise me in the slightest. Depending on the GW, I've seen some of the same things happen. The one near me tends to keep things together, and I think the few things that do get separated are because they don't know what goes with what.

 

I also see no consistency in pricing. One may have a Genesis with all hookups for $15-$20 while one across town might have it for $40.

[+save2600]

Back in the mid 90's, I applied for the "donation processing" position and was accidentally hired by the BadWill in town here for the obvious benefit of classic gaming collecting. lol Long story short, their pricing policies are completely random, shotty and if someone really doesn't have a bit of common sense, you will see system pieces broken up and priced separately. And if that's not bad enough, employees were not allowed to snag or stash donations before some unqualified dolt had a chance to get their grubby hands on everything, scratch, ding, dent, drop, and price whatever it was. lol

 

IMO, as a company, BadWill's intentions have always been obvious: capitalize on the goodwill of people during a time when garage saling and thrifting was really becoming popular and align your business under the faux assumption that you're truly an EOE that cares, but coincidentally is also just as happy to reap any and all tax shelters and other benefits/subsidies they may qualify for. And now they have an internet presence where you can bid on what sumgoofball *thinks* is a rarer item.

[Lendorien]

None of your observations surprise me in the slightest. Depending on the GW, I've seen some of the same things happen. The one near me tends to keep things together, and I think the few things that do get separated are because they don't know what goes with what.

 

I also see no consistency in pricing. One may have a Genesis with all hookups for $15-$20 while one across town might have it for $40.

 

 

The Goodwills around me have the same practices. They price all the parts separately. I suppose it's easier to sell stuff that way. I will say that I don't understand that they'll price an old dreamcast for 25 bucks but won't bother to keep allt he parts together, so by the time you get to it, it has no powe cord of av cable or controllers. So it sits there for weeks unbought til they end up junking it.

 

Lately around here they've started pricing games at 4 bucks, but seriously, they have like 15 PS2 sports games of various sports from the early 2000's. Who's going to buy those? Really? Or the stacks and stacks of Reader Rabbit and Jumpstart they have on their software shelf that no-one in their right mind will never buy for 2 bucks each.

Edited January 4, 2010 by Lendorien

[King_Salamon]

This is the beauty of GW stores and thrift stores... what you didn't mention is how sometimes you get a bag of 2 or 3 carts and with the defender and Ms Pac Man there's a Gas Hog or some other rare game.

 

Bottom line... be thankful you can find the missing pieces at the store... usually you would only find 1 of 3 pieces and need to make a decision whether it's worth buying... kinda like gambling. lol

 

The people that work there are going to make 1 of 2 decisions... 1 is to make everything separate and sell it off that way (usually inexpensive) and 2 box up the stuff and put it in a glass case and price it at double what it's worth. Both decisions I've found in the same GW store too. lol

 

I remember the golden days of thrifting... the early to mid 90's was a good time to be a gamer.

[BDW]

You guys are lucky if you are seeing systems for that price, whenever I see a system at Goodwill, the prices are rediculous. I saw a $60 NES for sale last week. Of course, all of the cords and controllers were separated.

[jboypacman]

The GoodWills around us are the same why and if you do find a game its a sports game for the Dreamcast or Genesis and game systems tend to be a PS1.

[AtariLeaf]

This is the beauty of GW stores and thrift stores... what you didn't mention is how sometimes you get a bag of 2 or 3 carts and with the defender and Ms Pac Man there's a Gas Hog or some other rare game.

 

 

A couple of months ago I was in a value village and they usually have kids software or old game software bundled in little baggies in packages of 3. One package had some crappy old PC wrestling game, Redneck Rampage for the PC, AND. . . TG-16 Military Madness CIB. $2.99

 

To the topic in question, its not just a goodwill thing, all thrifts do this now. Sally Ann and Value Village are doing it too. Even the little independant mom and pop thrifts are parting everything out.

[Mirage]

There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason. In the past 2 years, I've been to plenty of thrifts in 4 different states. Each of the chains and independents had pricing all over the board, some were parted out, some whole, it just all seems so random. Fortunately, the couple I go to the most often near where I now live bundle everything in bags. Sometimes they're priced crazy, other times not so bad (same store). I'm just surprised that the Goodwill has them in-store still rather than put them on their website. My cheapest console find recently was a mint complete DreamCast for $10, even had a couple games with it. But other times I see DC's or PS1's for $40-$50 incomplete. Makes no sense.

 

I just wish they'd stop sticking their stupid sticky stickers directly onto the cart labels!

[ianoid]

Be thankful it doesn't make sense. When it starts to make sense, it will be the death of thrift stores. Let me also note that if they were to use eBay to price everything, there would be no reason for anyone to go to thrift stores anymore.

 

Goodwill sucks because they don't have much in the way of sales. If stuff isn't going on sale weekly, then the store doesn't have enough turnaround to provide much loot on a regular basis.

 

Said it before: the quality of the thrift store is only as good as the honesty of the management. If you are not seeing old games it's probably because someone is taking them before they make it to the sales floor.

Edited January 4, 2010 by ianoid

[Shawn]

My experience has been that the bigger the city the more they split up the console. Locally in my City of around 30K people you always get the bagged up with hookups systems. Most the time eveything from 2600 to PS1 is $9.99. You go to the next city over about 30 mins away that is about 100K people and they part out the consoles the most they can and charge at least $20 for a bare genesis console.

 

Recently my local GW jumped the price of Genesis and NES games from $1.99 to $3.99 which really sucks monkey balls. Small consolation is the 2600 carts, when they have them, are still only $1 or less but they have not had Atari in a while so God only knows maybe they are $4 a pop now too.

[Cebus Capucinis]

The Goodwill here charges $2.99 per 2600 cart, and they never have anything above a R2. $2.99 for a Combat? Sheesh. They've been in the bins for months, nobody in their right mind will buy them -- I hope. I'm thinking about just taking them up to the counter and making an offer, but I'll probably get the same rigamarole tz did. Around here they also have a "GoodWill truck route" -- they claim that there isn't much market for certain items in our small town so whenever they take donations they load up around 50-75% of it and ship it off to the bigger area about an hour away. I'd venture a guess that if you are within a 2 hour drive from a metro area they're probably doing that as well. I can understand the business practice of it but it sucks when you can't find much of anything.

 

A friend of mine worked there for a couple months loading and unloading trucks, and he couldn't figure out why he was loading trucks back up. He asked and they told him. They're pretty up-front about it. I bet if you go in and ask at the front counter they'll probably tell you whether they do it or not. That's what I did, and the girl at the counter just looked at me and said "Well, yeah, that way we can get better prices for some stuff." It would also explain why a larger populated area has prices that are more marked up.

 

At least we have the Marketplace!

[rsiddall]

...Goodwill sucks because they don't have much in the way of sales. If stuff isn't going on sale weekly, then the store doesn't have enough turnaround to provide much loot on a regular basis...

 

And when that happens they cease to exist. We had a Goodwill store in Decatur, Al for the last 20 years and the quality of the merchandise took a nose dive around the time they opened their online site with electronics hardly making an appearance over the last 10 years. They've effectively replaced walk-in purchases in favor of trying to make more money through online auctions. Our local store closed in December 2009.

 

I remember the days when Birmingham had a huge center that had bins so tall you would literally have to climb them in order to get something. *sigh*

[Blackbag]

The 2 Goodwill stores I occasionally check in my area of Atlanta are exactly the same. If it's out on the shelf, a console is completely parted out-- Console in one section, controllers hanging in another, and the power cords/adapter are in a bin. Any carts/disks are up front with the other media (software, DVDs, CDs, VHS). This is how they handle older consoles. For later generation consoles (say PS2/XBOX generation or greater) it's behind the glass counter in a bundle, minus games. Lots of dates sports titles for the PS1/PS2 with very few cart based items (if so, mostly N64 and SNES). Every once in a while there's something good, but it's very, very rare.

[tz101]

So it sits there for weeks unbought til they end up junking it.

 

I saw the same thing at Salvation Army a while back. They had a few older flatbed scanners for PC that were priced around $10-$20 range. I had been wanting a scanner that would scan legal sized documents and they had one, but it didn't have a power cord. The cord it required was your basic PC or VGA monitor power cord, but they had none of these lying around the store. I planned on coming back another day and bringing a spare power cord from home just to test if it powered on before buying it. I went back a week later and all their scanners were gone. I asked the store attendant where they all went, and she informed me that the manager had decided that none of them were going to sell, and needed the shelf space for other items, so they all went to the trash dumpster. Wow. A couple of the scanners had original boxes and manuals with them. I spoke to the manager and asked him why he didn't simply offer to give some of those goods away and he had no explanation. I would have taken that legal size one without knowing if it powered on or not, but it went to a landfill instead.

[Zenoff64]

Yeah my goodwill is the same way in terms of pricing. They recently wanted $150 something for an original xbox and almost $90 for an N64 with like 3 games. Most recently, crappy Ps1 sports games for $10 a pop.

The trick is to hit the store up several times a week at random times to get the best deals due to the bizarre pricing structure.

[IntellivisionDude]

I have never been to the local Goodwill yet, but there is an awesome bookstore near me that sells Systems and Games. They have a scratched game section where they sell $20 games for $5, and most of the time the scratches aren't bad at all. Only thing i don't like is they use a marker and put VS on the front of the disk. I have picked all the Mario Party games for the Gamecube for $5 a piece. Today i picked up a very scratched copy of Namco Museum 50th Anniversary for the Ps2 for $5. I took it right to the local video store that has a Buffer machine and now it looks like new. Got the marker off as well using a Dry Erase Marker. Also picked up a Dreamcast with cords and a controller for $21.95 today. Some systems they sell cheap and some they don't. It's hard to find even a broken Dreamcast on Ebay for $20, they usually go for $30-40. Also got a 6 button Genesis Arcade Stick for $5 there.

 

I do need to take a trip to Goodwill.

[taxman]

So it sits there for weeks unbought til they end up junking it.

 

I saw the same thing at Salvation Army a while back. They had a few older flatbed scanners for PC that were priced around $10-$20 range. I had been wanting a scanner that would scan legal sized documents and they had one, but it didn't have a power cord. The cord it required was your basic PC or VGA monitor power cord, but they had none of these lying around the store. I planned on coming back another day and bringing a spare power cord from home just to test if it powered on before buying it. I went back a week later and all their scanners were gone. I asked the store attendant where they all went, and she informed me that the manager had decided that none of them were going to sell, and needed the shelf space for other items, so they all went to the trash dumpster. Wow. A couple of the scanners had original boxes and manuals with them. I spoke to the manager and asked him why he didn't simply offer to give some of those goods away and he had no explanation. I would have taken that legal size one without knowing if it powered on or not, but it went to a landfill instead.

 

Time to start hanging out at the Goodwill Dumpsters!!!

[MausGames]

There is a good solution though; Go to the Salvation Army store instead! The one where I volunteer, all of the gaming donations have to go straight to the manager, and she stashes them all in a bin. I sort them once every week or two, clean them up, test them and price them. I think they are reasonable; complete, classic systems are usually $20 or $25, including heavy sixers and unused jr's.

 

I always put complete systems in a clear plastic bag, staple it, and tape on a large pricing card so I can write a list of every component that comes with it by the price. This method works, they always sell, and the parts don't get scattered. If GW is going to split the stuff up, they might as well go to the trouble of rebagging and labelling, and putting them on pegs like other stores that sell used cords and accessories. Who wants to dig through bins of cords, that's dumb.

 

When we get random cords, I usually stash them to match to incomplete systems that come in. I think the system works well, splitting stuff up and random pricing would be stupid and pointless.

Edited January 5, 2010 by MausGames

[MausGames]

I saw the same thing at Salvation Army a while back. They had a few older flatbed scanners for PC that were priced around $10-$20 range. I had been wanting a scanner that would scan legal sized documents and they had one, but it didn't have a power cord. The cord it required was your basic PC or VGA monitor power cord, but they had none of these lying around the store. I planned on coming back another day and bringing a spare power cord from home just to test if it powered on before buying it. I went back a week later and all their scanners were gone. I asked the store attendant where they all went, and she informed me that the manager had decided that none of them were going to sell, and needed the shelf space for other items, so they all went to the trash dumpster. Wow. A couple of the scanners had original boxes and manuals with them. I spoke to the manager and asked him why he didn't simply offer to give some of those goods away and he had no explanation. I would have taken that legal size one without knowing if it powered on or not, but it went to a landfill instead.

 

That's pretty crappy, but it happens all the time. I get pretty disgusted by what goes into the dumpsters, but so far I haven't been able to work out many good solutions for how to reduce that problem. I wish they could have a great big fifty cent bin and dump all that sort of stuff in it, I would think that would be preferable to paying to dispose of it all. I try to rescue and reprice some stuff that I know for sure would sell, I can't count how many handhelds including ds that I've dug out and cleaned up. All of our scanners are $5 and we don't put any out without all of the cords. That is one of the benefits of having large sorting areas, if something isn't complete the rest of it almost always comes along sooner or later. I guess some of the stores must be pretty bad, but this one is pretty much tons of awesome nice stuff for cheap; my mind boggles at what people get rid of.

[cavanor]

At least you guys in the US actually get electronics at Goodwill/Salvation army etc. Here in Australia it is very very rare to see any game consoles as they have to all be tested and tagged as electronically safe (I guess they're more likely to test and sell a CD player or TV over a console) before sale. Wandered in today and got myself a $10 CRT TV and US Aerial to Aussie Aerial adapter for the grand total of $14 tho. I'm hording CRTs as they aren't making more of them.

[Almost Rice]

I'm hording CRTs as they aren't making more of them.

 

Speaking of hoarding.

 

I have been picking up free TVs from people. I just got a Sony kv-34hs510 CRT HDTV that has power issues. I am trying to fix it. I have also picked up a 32in Toshiba and 40in Mitsubishi. The Sony and Mitsubishi are over 200lb. My wife is also getting annoyed I am taking up her warehouse space. I have paid about $20-40 for TVs but only it is one of the more recent CRT TVs with component connections.

[+save2600]

There is a good solution though; Go to the Salvation Army store instead! The one where I volunteer, all of the gaming donations have to go straight to the manager, and she stashes them all in a bin. I sort them once every week or two, clean them up, test them and price them. I think they are reasonable; complete, classic systems are usually $20 or $25, including heavy sixers and unused jr's.

 

I always put complete systems in a clear plastic bag, staple it, and tape on a large pricing card so I can write a list of every component that comes with it by the price. This method works, they always sell, and the parts don't get scattered. If GW is going to split the stuff up, they might as well go to the trouble of rebagging and labelling, and putting them on pegs like other stores that sell used cords and accessories. Who wants to dig through bins of cords, that's dumb.

 

When we get random cords, I usually stash them to match to incomplete systems that come in. I think the system works well, splitting stuff up and random pricing would be stupid and pointless.

 

Wow, that's cool you volunteer like that. I was going to add something to this thread when I caught your post: It's just a better idea to donate (goods, time, etc.) to The Salvation Army anyway. Much more legit AND they've historically been there for people in need. I NEVER donate anything to the BadWill's anymore. Haven't for years. I can't stand their phoney business model/mission statement, store layouts, silly policies, et al.

 

Salavating Amy all the way baby! OR the independent hospital type thrifts.

[BigO]

I saw the same thing at Salvation Army a while back. They had a few older flatbed scanners for PC that were priced around $10-$20 range. I had been wanting a scanner that would scan legal sized documents and they had one, but it didn't have a power cord. The cord it required was your basic PC or VGA monitor power cord, but they had none of these lying around the store. I planned on coming back another day and bringing a spare power cord from home just to test if it powered on before buying it. I went back a week later and all their scanners were gone. I asked the store attendant where they all went, and she informed me that the manager had decided that none of them were going to sell, and needed the shelf space for other items, so they all went to the trash dumpster. Wow. A couple of the scanners had original boxes and manuals with them. I spoke to the manager and asked him why he didn't simply offer to give some of those goods away and he had no explanation. I would have taken that legal size one without knowing if it powered on or not, but it went to a landfill instead.

 

That's pretty crappy, but it happens all the time. I get pretty disgusted by what goes into the dumpsters, but so far I haven't been able to work out many good solutions for how to reduce that problem. I wish they could have a great big fifty cent bin and dump all that sort of stuff in it, I would think that would be preferable to paying to dispose of it all. I try to rescue and reprice some stuff that I know for sure would sell, I can't count how many handhelds including ds that I've dug out and cleaned up. All of our scanners are $5 and we don't put any out without all of the cords. That is one of the benefits of having large sorting areas, if something isn't complete the rest of it almost always comes along sooner or later. I guess some of the stores must be pretty bad, but this one is pretty much tons of awesome nice stuff for cheap; my mind boggles at what people get rid of.

 

I've seen one Goodwill "Clearance Center" (I think it was in Flagstaff, AZ) where they forego any pretense of merchandising and do in fact sell stuff out of bins. My wife and I both found some things there. They sell many/most of their items by the pound.