A fine day at the thrift store...

Cue Macklemore here, but it really was a good day...

Found an unplayed [as box open but cards and bits still in shrink] Catan Card Game for $1.50. Already have a copy but couldn't let it just languish among all those copies of The Ungame and shit. Anyone coming to WBC can have it for a beer; otherwise, I'm just going to donate it to the WBC library because someone should be playing it (and, yea, I know there's a new version...but for a buck and a half....)

Also found a barely played copy of HABA's Socken Zocken, which my daughter has already fallen in love with [and is almost playing properly by the rules, which ain't bad for 3.5]. Along with a $2 Fisher-Price farmhouse/barn thing that makes noise and has become home to all her various little animals [and has seen Hello Kitty repurposed into a farm hand...]. Add to that a penguin [her favorite critter du jour] "sleep lite" [it's a stuffed creature with a built in LED and stencil-thing that shines stars on her ceiling in 3 different colors] for $1, and I'm the best daddy in the whole goddamned world as far as she's concerned.

Also found a half-dozen new [with tags] or nearly-so linen and silk shirts for an average of $6 per. Oh, and a full set of Craftsman metric crescent wrenches for $5.

Now that's a fine damn day...

I found a copy of New England (of all things) at Goodwill. I didn't buy it because it sucks.

I've had some good finds at thrift stores / used book stores: GW Fury of Dracula, Star Wars: Epic Duels, AH Civilization (unpunched), Hoity Toity, Jambo, Risk: 2210 AD...

I found a copy of Battleball for two bucks and change at a local thrift store, worth it for the minis alone. They had an older copy of Stratego (the kind where the pieces are molded and painted with the unit, not stickered). Woulda bought it, but it was missing _one piece_. I was a sad panda. I did find a 1st edition hardcover Carl Sagan's Contact though.

Every time I go food shopping, I stop by that thrift store (it's nearly next door), you never know what they might have.

I really need to find a thrift store I can check into regularly.

Chaz wrote: I really need to find a thrift store I can check into regularly.

I don't think it's worth going to one that's out of the way. 99 times out of 100 it's nothing but crap, so not worth the gas or your time. I only have so many finds because there's one pretty close to my work and it gives me an excuse to leave to office at lunch.

bfkiller wrote:

Chaz wrote: I really need to find a thrift store I can check into regularly.

I don't think it's worth going to one that's out of the way. 99 times out of 100 it's nothing but crap, so not worth the gas or your time. I only have so many finds because there's one pretty close to my work and it gives me an excuse to leave to office at lunch.

True to a point, but I think it *really* depends on where you live. DC metro area is big money, which often means you get top-dollar donations. $100+ silk shirts, often with tags still on 'em, and custom made shirts and suits are not at all uncommon. I've picked up a shitload of nice stuff at the dozen or so thrift stores right off the Beltway in MD and VA.

I've told this story here any number of times before I believe; but as far as games go, over the course of about 3 years, I made at least $9k flipping games on ebay that I picked up at thrift stores, yard sales, and off [generally] local Craigslist. Shit, I probably made $800 just selling *scrabble tiles* to scrapbooker/craft art types. It made my return to the hobby completely budget-neutral. I think I turned over the entire Avalon Hill (including the Hasbro stuff) product line at one point.

When the real estate market blew up a few years back, the thrift stores went with them in a lot of ways. The quality of donated material was crap and there was a lot more stuff getting trucked in from other shops in the big chain thrifts (Goodwill, Unique/Value Village, etc.) and it was your run of the mill dreck.

I've hit them regularly over the last 3 years to pick up baby/toddler clothes [I'm glad someone buys this stuff new, but I see very little need to do so] and always hit the rest of the aisles. Quality of clothing picked up again to "pre-bubble" quality fairly quickly; but it's only in the last 6 months or so that I've seen the rest of the stuff really start to ramp back up.

Picked up a Clue Master Detective as an upgrade for my house copy for a buck and a half a couple of days ago, too. Good game and, when I was regularly selling, a huge cash cow. It was pretty common and always a regular $50 seller. (the LOTR Risk with the cool metal One Ring was the big 'un. I flipped at least 8 copies for anywhere from $60 to $110 each--never paid more than $7 for a copy. God that was a ridiculously easy sell....)

I got out of selling a bit before the lean years because Ebay made it damn near impossible to be profitable as a low-volume seller or on low-margin items. Before they acquired Paypal and basically tripled total end-to-end fees, it was worth picking up a $1.50 copy of some OOP party game (Wise or Otherwise, What Were You Thinking, whatever that charades game was with the "movie clapper"-timer thing--that was an ENORMOUS seller right around Xmas) and flipping it for $20-$30. Now, it's not worth the hassle unless it's $75+ seller.

But I'll always pick up a hobby game for a couple of bucks, if only just to give it away. Hell, secret Satan is coming, after all...

About a month ago I found a complete, unplayed copy Transfomers Armada: Battle for Cybertron. That's the Transformers version of Epic Duels. It's not held in the same high regard that Epic Duels is, but I actually think it's the better of the two games. The healing rules are omitted, and while you don't get any secondary characters, they recommend you play with two characters and the game ends when one of them is dead. Same amount of time to finish the game and you get two totally badass characters instead of great one and one okay one. Plus, I _love_ pretty much anything Transformers when not in the hands of Bay. I lost my first game because my wife had Optimus Prime turn into a truck and run over Starscream. So fun.

That's a nice find Josh. I finally picked up one off ebay and considered myself lucky to (1) find a copy and (2) pay less than $30 for it. I've found copies of Dark Tower and a gazillion copies of Heroquest, including totally unpunched sets, but I'd never even had so much as a sniff of Transformers Armada. (Daytona 500 was the other one I really wanted but never had so much as a sniff of in 5 years of regular thrifting...and then, of course, found 2 copies under $10 within 6 weeks of finally working out a trade for one.)