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Im rethinking my anger towards Goodwill prices.


Dripfree

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On any given day I go to goodwill I always see $40,000 cars in the parking lot and people inside wearing $300 leather coats and $500 iphones and everything else.d buys anything at all there instead of a reseller is not very common at my locations.

A lot of those people are what we like to call "severely in debt" =)

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Even if you buy at eBay prices, you save on shipping if you get the items from the Goodwill store you're anyhow visiting.

Problem in my neck of the woods is they never have anything cause they send all techy stuff downtown, so by the time you add gas and sales tax its usually more than average shipping

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lol you don't honestly think only people in need go there do you? Honestly the real needy can't afford most goodwill prices. On any given day I go to goodwill I always see $40,000 cars in the parking lot and people inside wearing $300 leather coats and $500 iphones and everything else.

 

Not sure how your Goodwills are but I would say mine are just 90% resellers. The likeliness that someone in need buys anything at all there instead of a reseller is not very common at my locations.

 

Sigh. Why is it that poor people always seem to have nicer phones and bigger data plans than I do?

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I lived in a shady neighborhood last year before buying this house, and it was on the corner of public housing ... anyway while moving in I brought the tv in the front door, someone asked (dont remember if it was a buddy or a parent) "arent you worried about someone eyeballing your tv"

 

to which I replied, "they would probally feel sorry for me and replace it with a bigger model"

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I lived in a shady neighborhood last year before buying this house, and it was on the corner of public housing ... anyway while moving in I brought the tv in the front door, someone asked (dont remember if it was a buddy or a parent) "arent you worried about someone eyeballing your tv"

 

to which I replied, "they would probally feel sorry for me and replace it with a bigger model"

 

Yup, poor people all have bigger TVs than me too.

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Yup, poor people all have bigger TVs than me too.

Sad thing is it's a respectable 42 inch but yea I would see the rental trucks show up all the time in and out of the Public housing part, dipping off 55+ inch models

 

I'm no making any comments about public housing, there's good and bad there, but when one has a private house that needs a couple grand worth of work on the outside, and a 50 grand car in the driveway, it makes you wonder

 

 

Considering the car looses hundreds of dollars a year and the housing market here gains several thousand, wtf people

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Sad thing is it's a respectable 42 inch but yea I would see the rental trucks show up all the time in and out of the Public housing part, dipping off 55+ inch models

 

I'm no making any comments about public housing, there's good and bad there, but when one has a private house that needs a couple grand worth of work on the outside, and a 50 grand car in the driveway, it makes you wonder

 

 

Considering the car looses hundreds of dollars a year and the housing market here gains several thousand, wtf people

 

I watch movies on my 19" 5:4 external monitor.

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In my experience I now have better luck at the "gheto" thrift stores. I feel most of the employees don't know of the value of old stuff and don't care enough to research prices before it hits the floor. I believe the stuff I look for stays on the shelf longer there too. All these people that you think probably have better tv's then you.... well an NES probably looks as about as usefull as a crt to them.

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I think a lot of stuff is purely by locale. I just tend to get a bit irritated when I see folks buying their government allowed food. and then using their cash for booze and cigarettes and bedazzlers.

 

But at the good will I tend to actually see pretty needy folks just looking for some decent clothes or a few in good shape kitchen items. Scarry though the last time I was in Salvation Army they had flat screen TV's right next to VCR's. Times be a changin when flat screen TV's are no longer pawn bait.

Edited by Professor Gull
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In my experience I now have better luck at the "gheto" thrift stores.

Oh gosh, I don't know...it seems like our ghetto has shootings almost every week, I don't know if it's worth the risk just to browse through piles of baby clothes and "it fell off the truck" assortments.

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Oh gosh, I don't know...it seems like our ghetto has shootings almost every week, I don't know if it's worth the risk just to browse through piles of baby clothes and "it fell off the truck" assortments.

 

I have lived in a couple over the years, just be polite and you wont have a problem (unless you live in Chicago hehe)

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F-That! There is no way in hell you are paying me to go to certain places in Rochester NY. Those people are fn nuts!

I have not been to Rochester NY in over 15 years and it was bad enough back then I can't even fathom it now. Its those scary places that make me happy I am in the heartland where there is nothing....fine yeah nothing so pretty much the same as staying home but we got corn.

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A house that should be worth well over $100,000 sells for $40,000. They have on the news every night about more people killed, and drive byes. They just had an older lady on the news who is so afraid of living in her house from bullets flying by that she has pillows stacked up blocking all her windows. It's got real bad in some areas. I think I just seen on the news 3-4 months back Rochester was considered the most poverty stricken area in NY and ranked on top of worst places to live in the country.

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To continue to enthusiastically derail this thread.... :grin:

 

A house that should be worth well over $100,000 sells for $40,000. They have on the news every night about more people killed, and drive byes. They just had an older lady on the news who is so afraid of living in her house from bullets flying by that she has pillows stacked up blocking all her windows. It's got real bad in some areas. I think I just seen on the news 3-4 months back Rochester was considered the most poverty stricken area in NY and ranked on top of worst places to live in the country.

 

I recall taking a wrong turn trying to get to a show at Waterstreet Music Hall maybe 10-15 year ago and ending up lost as all hell. Any time I stopped at a stop sign people would walk over so I just ceased stopping and figured if a cop pulled me over that might be best. It does not seem these areas have improved. Rather unfortunate.

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Problem in my neck of the woods is they never have anything cause they send all techy stuff downtown, so by the time you add gas and sales tax its usually more than average shipping

 

Why does stuff get sent downtown or to some other central location? Can't they just like kindasorta leave it at the store?

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Why does stuff get sent downtown or to some other central location? Can't they just like kindasorta leave it at the store?

 

they have a central tech only store where they like to charge obnoxious prices for old computers, what it leaves is occasionally you might find a cd mixed in, a gazillion network hubs and once in a while a floppy drive

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Boy, a lot going on in this thread.

As for Goodwill, I don't shop there for a multitude of reasons. Maybe they really help people, I don't know. I don't care for the way they do business, so I don't go there.

As to their prices though, it's really easy to blame them, but they're not the problem. Speaking purely about the "collectable" video game market, prices are dictated purely by resellers and people who are fine overpaying for stuff. It's really easy to walk into any store, be it a thrift store or a used video game store, and be annoyed by the prices. But why should they be selling things for pennies when they can get a lot more? You would rather see them supplying eBay resellers with cheap stock? Goodwill is just being smart, and I don't blame them one bit. It allows them to maximize profits (which is what every business wants to do) and it let's them keep better merchandise in stock. I've been buying old video games for about 20 years now and I miss the old days as much as anybody, but the entitlement that some people feel wherein they think that thrift stores should be obligated to sell them video games for 25 cents (ostensibly because they were donated items) just doesn't compute.

Same goes for used video game stores. People get upset when they walk in to some locally-owned shop to find them asking $45 for a loose Contra cart. They could charge $20 but then some clown would just buy it to throw up on eBay, and then the store would just be full of games that no one wants, which would bring fewer people through the doors. If I owned a video game store, I would absolutely charge top dollar for stuff, and then would just cut deals for known store regulars who were real gamers and not just flippers or collectards. I no longer go to video game stores (or video game expos, which are just full of resellers now) for this exact reason, but I 100% understand why they do business the way that they do.

 

As for the topic de-railing conversation, there is a sense of entitlement amongst certain people wherein no matter how little money people have, they think that they should have HDTVs, smartphones, and whatever else. When I was a kid, we didn't have money. As a result we had an old car, an old TV, a modest stereo, almost never went out to eat, and never went on vacations. Back then, a 19" TV was pretty standard, and a big-screen TV was a serious luxury. Sure, I would be jealous of other kids who had nicer things than we did, or could afford to eat out at restaurants or go on vacations to places like Hawaii, but it's not like it ruined my childhood. It's just life.

 

I too find it amusing to see people who clearly can't afford to do so flashing their bling around. I live in an area with a lot of migrant workers, and we even have specific migrant housing (which are basically just low-income apartments for migrant farmworkers). There are folks in these housing deals driving brand new Ford F150s and other pricey cars because they're trying to one-up each other, because somehow looking good in front of your peers is more important than actually getting ahead in life. My two biggest expenses every month BY FAR are my mortgage and my 401k. But both are investments in my future. In the mean time, I drive an old air-cooled VW (when I'm not commuting by bicycle), have an older iPhone and other outdated-but-still-useful electronics, and the biggest TV in my house is 32" (again, it's bigger than anything I had growing up). I reluctantly buy things like new shoes, new clothes, or parts for my car or bike. Honestly, the only things I spend money on without hesitation are food and beer.

 

My point isn't to say "look how cool I am", but rather to point out that many poorer people are poor for a reason. They make bad life decisions, and focus on the now instead of the future. I actually have friends who make fun of me for saving so much for retirement (while they save nothing and depend on our pension plan and SS), or for having stuff like a small TV (while they have wall-sized 4k sets) or an old car (while they're driving luxury European cars). But they can check back in with me when we're both in our mid-60's, and we'll see who's laughing then. :P

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As to their prices though, it's really easy to blame them, but they're not the problem. Speaking purely about the "collectable" video game market, prices are dictated purely by resellers and people who are fine overpaying for stuff. It's really easy to walk into any store, be it a thrift store or a used video game store, and be annoyed by the prices. But why should they be selling things for pennies when they can get a lot more? You would rather see them supplying eBay resellers with cheap stock? Goodwill is just being smart, and I don't blame them one bit.

 

There is a price of what someone will pay to resell. Goodwill goes above beyond that price. If a game sells for $20 shipped a reseller is not going to spend $15 on it, as they would be losing money. Goodwill could honestly mark a $20 shipped game for like $14 and only a dumb reseller who doesn't comprehend shipping and fees would buy it.

 

Even more is systems. Say a System sells for $50 shipped again only an idiot reseller would pay $30 to resell. For fees and shipping you are paying MIN. $20. So Goodwill could charge $30 for a system that sells for $50 shipped and they are safe. But no that's not goodwill's way. They will charge $80 for that system that sells for $50 shipped or $25 for that game that sells for $20 shipped.

 

Wait there is more. You mean you actually expect them to sell a system all together.... oh hell no. They are going to sell the controller separate, the a/v cables separate, and the power separate. When it is all said and done you might as well bring a bottle of lube with you to help that screwing they just gave you.

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