I try to find interesting items while thrifting. Over the last year I managed to find, incredibly, a vacuum-tube oscilloscope, various decent cassette decks, some ancient chunky VCRs^*^ for decoration purposes, usable Win 10 PCs, a bunch of physical media, a bean to cup coffee machine, even usable 500G and 1T external hard drives for like 15$. This stuff is just fun junk to play around with, and it allowed me to get a sense of offerings from Value Village and Goodwill.
I also got a bit of a kick from the thrill of the hunt. What will I find?
However in the last month, I've noticed a drying up of these items, a shrinking of the physical media sections, and re-arranging their store's layouts to increase the clothes offerings (nothing wrong with that).
Is it seasonal or have high prices for fun items made people check before donating? Or are thrift stores in Canada becoming more like American stores with "premium" items being offered online?
Guess I'll never find dbx vinyls at Goodwill now...
(*) Way too many dried or disintegrated belts and rollers in older VCRs. They simply don't work anymore.
Well I continue to observe the same thing, fewer tech finds, fewer media finds. The CDs, DVDs, and BluRays are diminishing and occupying a smaller space, the tech stuff is not terribly interesting, but lots of clothes, boots, and shoes. And that's across the board in the various stores.