eBay

keziak · ‎10-11-2017

I drive past a Goodwill at least twice a day but haven't stopped in for, what, 15 years? (we donate from time to time). I decided to see what books they had. I was quite surprised. I immediately found some bowls I wanted and there was a lot of nice china but I know nothing about that (or clothes or collectibles).

The book and media sections were pretty good. I tend to use "thrift store" as shorthand for old and crummy books and this wasn't fair about this store. Quite a lot of nice things. As a Friend of the library I wish people would donate to us instead, though!

There was a problem with the high prices , especially since I'm used to the buck-a-book pricing libraries tend to use. For example I found some Game of Thrones paperbacks. I would have paid 50 cents for them but they were marked $1.50. There were some DVD sets but priced high. The hardcovers were kind of high. I hasten to add that as a charity they should try to get the best prices but I have no idea if their books just sit due to high prices. I plan to check back from time to time. They explained they have a color system in which every week some things are half off. I signed up to get email alerts.

moondogblues · ‎10-13-2017

"An employee, who was one of my ex employees, told me that they hold all the valuable stuff back and send it out with friends - or it disappears, and it ends up on ebay on an independent id, not Goodwill auction."

Google the San Jose CA Goodwill bust from about 20 years ago. There was a whole ring of them selling stuff out the back door, the police figure a million or so dollars worth. Just theft, plain and simple. A bunch of them went to jail.

rolenboy01 · ‎10-13-2017

@rixstuff wrote:
Our local libraries dont take new read-once books. They INSIST on money. So what do they do with the money? Buy books...a horrible shame too. They could spend their cash on so many other things if they took the best sellers as donations instead of having TWO copies and a waiting list of 400 people. Cant fix stupid.

I'm not sure what they are doing with the money the are supposedly using for books at our local libraries most of the books are over 30 years old so they certainly aren't using it on new books.