Is there money to be made at thrift stores?

most definately money to be made at thrift stores, picked up 150+ grams of sterling silver yesterday for less than $5.
have picked up many items for resale, vintage toys, antiques, artwork, just have to be able to turn the stuff that you pick up.

where to sell is going to be up to you, evilbay, craigslist, yard sale, flea market.
if you are buying to scrap make sure you can guess the weight of items you are buying, dont want to buy a piece of brass for $4 and it wind up weighing less than 2 pounds.

Last non-profit I worked with stuck us with over 300 tv's but there ended up being quite a bit of other electrical type stuff they just threw away that we picked out of the dumpster.

Here's our original post on this huge TV pickup in case anyone was interested; http://www.scrapmetalforum.com/day-l...inda-long.html

Look at the "Junk Jewelry" some of it is gold filled. See my thread in the buyers forum, I'll take any Gold Filled you find off of your hands!

I haven't spent much time checking out thrift stores yet. I did go to the local Goodwill once, but their prices were way too high to make a profit through scrapping, and I didn't see anything priced low enough to attempt resale either. I've read other posts about how Goodwill can be a good place to get rid of old CRTs (They mark those up high too, they want 20 dollars for a 19 inch!), but I haven't seen anything posted about them being a good source for scrap. Has anyone here had a similar experience with Goodwill?

The one thing Goodwill is good for is makeshift Halloween costumes. Why pay 20-30 bucks for some crappy costume at Wal-Mart when you can spend a few bucks at Goodwill and come up with something far more creative.... Which reminds me, I did have one successful re-sale experience from a Goodwill. A buddy and I were looking for halloween costume stuff at a Goodwill years ago. I was scrounging through one box, and lo and behold, I found a military issue Kevlar helmet with a sticker pricing it at 9 dollars. I found one of the store employees (an overweight guy dressed up like Ric Flair and wearing an aluminum foil championship belt) and asked him about the validity of the price. He walked to the back with it, and a minute later brought it back with a new sticker pricing it at 2 dollars. Of course I stopped asking questions at that point and bought the thing. It turns out, one of my fellow Marines who had misplaced her issued helmet heard about my story and asked if she could buy it from me. I ended up trading it to her for a bottle of high quality tequila.

Man, there's a resale shop here that keeps me BUSY with non-working, non-selling electronics. They used to didn't take computer stuff, now they give it all to me. They give me some crap... speakers, ugh... but I take it with a smile because sometimes they come up with a gem:








Pitch your partnership as you helping them keep stuff out of their dumpster... which you are.

Originally Posted by happyisthealero

how do you spot silver at a thrift store I have been fooled before. I bought some one time took it home and it turned out it was ferrous.

i dont think your gonna find any sterling silver at a thrift store, the employees inspect and price everything that comes in, and i can tell you that alot of the stuff that comes in does not make it to the sales floor. One of the perks of being a thrift store employee.

Look for markings or brand names, if in doubt write notes or take pictures with your cell phone, then you can check on the internet when you get back home.


I do find alot of name brand lead crystal that is priced very low and can be worth alot.

Look on the underside of the item for these marks 925 is sterling and a lion face is British selver. That's the two I know of. You never know, some of the smaller thrift stores have people that don't know what thiere looking at. Hey- I found a sterling silver chain in a dumpster once.

At the goodwill that I went to all the time, I left a magnet there, I put it on a stand that was always going to be on the counter. (Small one out of a cdrom). Dont get me wrong the manager and other employees knew it was there and used it too, after I showed them what it was for. Silver is usually stamped 925 or sterling.

ok heres a magnet tip, keep a p38 on your keychain and stick a hard drive magnet on it, that way you will always have a magnet with you, also the hard drive magnet backing plates have screw holes in them that you keyring will go thru, either way will work, i like the p38 method because the magnet comes off the keyring easily when its needed, just dont put your keyring in the same pocket as your wallet

another one is screwing the magnets to a piece of wood then attaching a broom handle to it, that way you dont have to bend over to pick the screws up off the floor