Recent charity shop buys

GJK1959

I bought a Yamaha FG acoustic for £30 in a Charity Shop - just needed some screws for the tuners. Haven’t played it much admittedly 

boogieman

Philly_Q said:

I've bought some CDs this week, but all new stuff.  I've got a bit of a phobia of charity shops, I imagine them all being staffed by annoyingly chatty old ladies.

Oi, I used to work in a charity shop. And I’m a miserable, non communicative bloke.  In fact there were several blokes who volunteered in there. (I do take you point though). 

One of the things I miss about the place is getting first dibs on donated cd’s. Although I’d have to wade through hundreds of naff ones to find the few occasional gems. If I never see another Robbie bloody Williams or Westlife CD it will still be too soon. 

english_bob

boogieman said:

Philly_Q said:

I've bought some CDs this week, but all new stuff.  I've got a bit of a phobia of charity shops, I imagine them all being staffed by annoyingly chatty old ladies.

Oi, I used to work in a charity shop. And I’m a miserable, non communicative bloke.  In fact there were several blokes who volunteered in there. (I do take you point though). 

One of the things I miss about the place is getting first dibs on donated cd’s. Although I’d have to wade through hundreds of naff ones to find the few occasional gems. If I never see another Robbie bloody Williams or Westlife CD it will still be too soon. 

I haven't been on a charity shop trawl for a while, but when I did it more regularly it was Mel C's album that seemed to be a fixture of every single charity shop ever.

I've seen rather a lot of Lostprophets albums in charity shops over the last few years. I always feel like I should take them to the counter and explain why they're never going to shift them, but nobody needs to know about Ian Watkins who doesn't already.

boogieman

english_bob said:

boogieman said:

Philly_Q said:

I've bought some CDs this week, but all new stuff.  I've got a bit of a phobia of charity shops, I imagine them all being staffed by annoyingly chatty old ladies.

Oi, I used to work in a charity shop. And I’m a miserable, non communicative bloke.  In fact there were several blokes who volunteered in there. (I do take you point though). 

One of the things I miss about the place is getting first dibs on donated cd’s. Although I’d have to wade through hundreds of naff ones to find the few occasional gems. If I never see another Robbie bloody Williams or Westlife CD it will still be too soon. 

I haven't been on a charity shop trawl for a while, but when I did it more regularly it was Mel C's album that seemed to be a fixture of every single charity shop ever.

I've seen rather a lot of Lostprophets albums in charity shops over the last few years. I always feel like I should take them to the counter and explain why they're never going to shift them, but nobody needs to know about Ian Watkins who doesn't already.

I honestly can’t remember seeing many Lost Prophets albums in all the time I volunteered. Maybe the people who owned them knew the score and just binned them? We did get a big influx of Michael Jackson stuff when all the Jordi  Wossisname court case was going on. 

THE most donated thing was the 50 Shades books. There was a rumour, not sure if it was an urban myth, that the third book was made of non recyclable paper and literally tonnes of them ended up in landfill instead of being pulped. 

ICBM

If it’s a shop that’s doing 2 or 3 for a quid and the jewel cases are OK, I’d buy LostProphets CDs for the cases and bin the contents… I’m always replacing broken cases.

This week’s finds included Jeff Wayne’s War Of The Worlds, which I never actually owned back in the day - just had a dodgy cassette copy from one of my mates. Good to hear it again, although to be honest it’s a bit patchy - some great bits and a fair amount of weaker stuff (side 3 especially).

hollywoodrox

ICBM said:

If it’s a shop that’s doing 2 or 3 for a quid and the jewel cases are OK, I’d buy LostProphets CDs for the cases and bin the contents… I’m always replacing broken cases.

This week’s finds included Jeff Wayne’s War Of The Worlds, which I never actually owned back in the day - just had a dodgy cassette copy from one of my mates. Good to hear it again, although to be honest it’s a bit patchy - some great bits and a fair amount of weaker stuff (side 3 especially).

Gosh darn it , I never thought of buying Cd’s for the cases , that’s a brilliant idea  as I’ve got some that have got cracked or the middle bit has come out. Excellent tip 

Redlester

Another gem of a find- I got hold of "Straight Life", the (often very harrowing) autobiography of jazz saxophonist Art Pepper. 

£2, and very compelling stuff. 

At one point this book was out of print and going for anything between £20- £40. 

And the best bit is that it's got me listening to his music again, which makes it all the more amazing how such a dysfunctional bloke could play so incredibly well. 

darthed1981

boogieman said:

THE most donated thing was the 50 Shades books. There was a rumour, not sure if it was an urban myth, that the third book was made of non recyclable paper and literally tonnes of them ended up in landfill instead of being pulped. 

As my past posts hopefully reflect, I'm a strong believer that if something makes you happy, it can't inherently be bad - the histrionics whenever Coldplay come up on here etc etc.

However the 50 Shades books, I read a few excerpts, and they are the worst written pieces of crap you can possibly imagine.  Really it's like a GCSE English short story by someone who is going to get a D.

I remember pointing out to groups of women going to see the films that pornography is free and plentiful online, you don't need to go watch a terrible film for five minutes of stuff you can remember later, no matter how cute Jamie Dornan is.

Well it's women who got off to it and Lewis Capaldi, apparently...

Jfingers

My most recent charity shop buy was pre covid on a weekend away. Both John Lydon and Steve Jones autobiographies and a Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers T shirt.

Five quid all in, I was very pleased with all of the items.

Philly_Q

darthed1981 said:

I remember pointing out to groups of women going to see the films that pornography is free and plentiful online, you don't need to go watch a terrible film for five minutes of stuff you can remember later, no matter how cute Jamie Dornan is.

Did you hang around outside cinemas with a placard, trying to turn them away at the door?

DefaultM

Philly_Q said:

darthed1981 said:

I remember pointing out to groups of women going to see the films that pornography is free and plentiful online, you don't need to go watch a terrible film for five minutes of stuff you can remember later, no matter how cute Jamie Dornan is.

Did you hang around outside cinemas with a placard, trying to turn them away at the door?

Worst thing anyone ever said to me when I worked at the cinema... 
Taylor Lautner that played the wolf in Twilight had his own film where he played the lead role. This 50 odd year old woman comes in with her ancient mother and says "one ticket to Taylor Lautner please, and I'll need a waterproof seat if you've got one".
I had to fight back a wince before it's her mum's turn and she repeats the exact same joke, then they both stand there howling telling me about how they hope he's constantly shirtless and how that gets them wet. Absolutely vile. 

darthed1981

Philly_Q said:

darthed1981 said:

I remember pointing out to groups of women going to see the films that pornography is free and plentiful online, you don't need to go watch a terrible film for five minutes of stuff you can remember later, no matter how cute Jamie Dornan is.

Did you hang around outside cinemas with a placard, trying to turn them away at the door?

BluesLover

Had a lively debate recently with the manager of an Oxfam music and books shop. I pointed out to him that all their vinyl seemed to be priced at top money, and consequently wasn't actually selling very well. There were albums I was interested in, but not at their prices, and they'd been in the shop for many weeks. Their stock is all donations, so surely money in the till was better than over priced stock not moving off the shelves? 
I said there used to be a famous used record shop where their prices dropped steadily (Beano's?) until they sold.
I was wasting my breath...

boogieman

BluesLover said:

Had a lively debate recently with the manager of an Oxfam music and books shop. I pointed out to him that all their vinyl seemed to be priced at top money, and consequently wasn't actually selling very well. There were albums I was interested in, but not at their prices, and they'd been in the shop for many weeks. Their stock is all donations, so surely money in the till was better than over priced stock not moving off the shelves? 
I said there used to be a famous used record shop where their prices dropped steadily (Beano's?) until they sold.
I was wasting my breath...

I’m surprised they had the space to hold onto stock for that long. Admittedly I worked in a small shop but we had a strict two-week policy. Two weeks at full price, two weeks reduced, then cleared out. The cleared out stuff was taken away by a proper recycling company, not landfill. 

ICBM

BluesLover said:

Had a lively debate recently with the manager of an Oxfam music and books shop. I pointed out to him that all their vinyl seemed to be priced at top money, and consequently wasn't actually selling very well. There were albums I was interested in, but not at their prices, and they'd been in the shop for many weeks. Their stock is all donations, so surely money in the till was better than over priced stock not moving off the shelves? 
I said there used to be a famous used record shop where their prices dropped steadily (Beano's?) until they sold.
I was wasting my breath...

There's a specialist Oxfam record shop in Edinburgh like that. I made a trip to it recently and came away with nothing, despite there being a lot of CDs I would have bought... but not at £5, £7 or even more when with a little patience you can find them on Ebay for about half that even including postage (free, if it's Music Magpie). Being willing to give to charity only goes so far.

But the Oxfam bookshop in Glasgow has stopped selling CDs, even though they were priced sensibly - £2.49 usually, which I'm OK with - when I asked why, the manager said they weren't selling enough to devote that much space to the rack (despite there being nothing else in the space now). I pointed out that I bought on average at least a couple whenever I'm there, although presumably it's not just me... it can't be, the turnover was pretty high because I usually didn't see much of the same stock for more than a month or two. Baffling.

Redlester

There really is not much a policy when it comes to pricing things. 

I have a little insight into this as I mentioned in a post above, because I know one of the managers at a local charity shop when I was discussing how they deploy young DofE volunteers- some shops do check what the going rate is for something online and price accordingly from there. 

Nothing wrong with that as long as it's priced fairly and priced to sell. 

The big problem is when- with books especially- often older editions of popular academic textbooks are priced at the RRP for the current edition, or bizarrely priced higher than that. 

hollywoodrox

I went to buy a vinyl Hits compilation from the early 80s it was priced at £2.75 but was badly scratched & dirty  & missing the inner paper sleeves . I pointed this out & said I’d pay 99p for it owing to its condition but the woman said  the manager would not allow them to drop the prices even though she only thought that’s what it was worth