I’ve noticed that thrift stores in my area have become trendy shopping destinations for upper class people looking for ‘vintage’ finds, driving up prices and reducing inventory for people who actually need affordable clothing. The whole ‘thrift flip’ trend on social media has made it harder for families on tight budgets to find decent clothes at reasonable prices. What used to be a necessity for some has become a hobby for many.
Comments
Please remember what subreddit you are in, this is unpopular opinion. We want civil and unpopular takes and discussion. Any uncivil and ToS violating comments will be removed and subject to a ban. Have a nice day!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
People who are trying to flip are looking for a needle in a haystack.
There is always racks and racks of cheap clothes.
If you’re low income and thrift shipping, designer labels are not a priority.
Depends on the thrift store — there has always been a distinction between touristy vintage shops and actual thrift stores.
Depends on the thrift store. There’s three within walking distance of where I live; two of them are actual thrift stores, and one is a resale/vintage store masquerading as a thrift store. Goodwill is HIGHLY hit or miss, but small stores that are run by organizations that also operate homeless shelters tend to be a LOT more reliable. You’re also supporting people in need when you shop at places like that.
Mostly
I have seen the same pattern before with farmers’ markets. They used to be relatively affordable but they have become “artisanal” food for hipsters.
Thanks Maclamor
been like this for a long time now
I’ve been op shopping since I was a teen. The rise of the internet and online second hand clothes platforms has been the driver behind this. It’s a real shame. Before ebay, depop and facebook you and everyone else were treasure hunting for yourself and your family only. Now, it’s a “side hustle”. I’m very sad about it, but I don’t think it will ever go back to the way it was.
r/ThriftGrift has entered the chat…
The prices are outrageous.
Have you been to a yard sale lately?Asking prices are as if the items were new. It’s ridiculous
Trust fund kids and transplants in NYC have made thrifting completely unaffordable. You are better off waiting for Black Friday and shopping online.
I work at a thrift store and I agree our prices are too high. We used to have a more intuitive pricing system, but now everything has a base price, then higher prices (tend to be 2-3x as much). No lower price for shorts or leggings, they cost just as much as dress pants. It’s very silly and every single worker in my store agrees it could use an overhaul.
We don’t even do sales like we used to, and I think doing those would help both us and the customers.
Any thrifting reduces waste. It’s a win-win in that regard.
I think a big part of the decline in thrift stores is that Facebook marketplace, Craigslist and eBay have created a strong market for second hand goods so anything decent will get posted there instead of being donated like it might have in the past. Thrift stores are now relegated to things that are too awkward, heavy, cheap, or otherwise undesirable to be worth listing for the owner.
And even when nicer things do get donated, they’re just as likely to be picked up by a scalper to be sold on those markets as they are by a person in need.
That’s been true since that terrible song came out 15 years ago.
Upper class people aren’t flocking to thrift stores.
Thrift stores decided, as “non profits”, they can charge as they please, and skim off the good stuff to sell online.
They were never meant to serve lower income.
Completely agree. I actually think flipping at thrift stores is very unethical. If I donate items to a thrift store, it’s for 2 reasons: so that the charity can make some money, and so that someone can get something they need or want that they might not otherwise be able to afford.
I do NOT donate so that entitled people can make a profit.
I don’t think anyone going in to the thrift store and buying clothes for themselves is a bad thing, because there is a limit on how much anyone actually buys for themselves.
I do think that thrift flippers are ruining thrifting, because they aren’t just buying one or two pieces that are in their size and of a style that they want – they are buying everything “good” that they can get their hands on and are monetizing it in ways that helps no one.
I also think that fast fashion dumping their off product into the thrift is also hurting thrifting because it turns the thrift store into a SHEIN outlet. And no one needs SHEIN clothing. Sorry, not sorry.
My local thrift shops all suck except for one which is run by members of the community. They’re actually trying to help people not line their pockets.
You know what annoys me the most? Most of those thrifting videos are super fake. I saw one the other day where someone pulled a Lalique vase off a shelf at Goodwill. Yeah right. Like they didn’t plant it there.
While I completely agree with your opinion and I hate what seems to be exploitation. The positive externality is that poor people wearing vintage clothes no longer stand out as poor. I know there are so many other ways to tell, but for a moment it gives a disguise
There is soooooooooo much low cost clothes at these stores it’s not even funny…. Low income shoppers are not after the same stuff teens from the burbs are looking for….. this is just looking for problems that don’t exist.
The purpose of thrift stores was not to help low income families, it was always to generate income for the owners.
My local OP shop posted on our town Facebook page. -don’t leave donations after hours or people will steal it snd your donations will go to waste”
Idk man if I donate to an OP shop I’d rather someone steal then it go for an insane price
Clothing is cheaper in discount stores like marshalls/burlington. They have new t-shirts and jeans for like $5-10
Thrifting is a hobby at this point
I know the one I go to is for-profit and probably does this—on the other hand they actually put clothes out sorted by sizes so it’s a much quicker and better shopping experience and I’m willing to pay a little bit more than goodwill for that.
True!
I fully agree. I was at Value Village while my husband looked at music and out of curiosity I checked the summer section. 18.00 for a used pantset/ one peice thing. 15.00 for used sandals?! I suddenly remembered why I don’t shop there.
We have a donation building next to our local garbage dump. We affectionately refer to it as The Dump Store. Sometimes I find nothing, other times I’ve found depression glass, expensive craft kits, beautiful picture frames, gardening stuff, outdoor tables and stools, I’ve never paid more than 8.00 for a pile of stuff. Sometimes $3.00, which included a beautiful clear glass lamp.THAT is how to run a thrift store and get product moving.
Thrift shops generally throw away a small amount of their clothing inventory just because they don’t have enough room on the racks. So if you ever think that the well-to-do are taking opportunities from the poor, you can rest assured that there’s much more in the store than anyone is able to buy.
Go to goodwill.
Thrift stores are not charities and when they are it’s not the store that is the charity the store is to generate income to fund the charity. If low income people are in need of clothing they need to reach out charities that give them.
I’m in Portland, and it’s gotten absolutely ridiculous. The hipsters all go to thrift stores for “vintage” clothing and other items, and it’s no longer affordable for the rest of us.
Thrift stores are meant to raise money to fund programs for the poor. the primary purpose is not provide a shopping experience for the poor but to use the store to provide opportunity and services for the poor.
Yep. The good stuff goes fast! And if you fuss even a little about the resellers, you’re met with nasty “choosy beggars” comments
It’s hard to make a good impression at a job interview or move up in a company when you’re wearing out of fashion, faded clothes.
People 100% deserve to be choosy at the thrift store and look for good labels and quality pieces so they can dress to impress. Some of us are trying to dig our way out of generational poverty here.
The Lawrence (KS) Social Service League used to be a thrift store intent on helping people with clothes, shoes, and household goods…because many people need to start over whether just getting out of jail, house burning down, houseless, etc. The manager there would trade goods for labor, or even just give what was needed, if the situation necessitated that. You could get a plastic grocery sack and pay $2 for everything you could stuff into it, clothing wise. When it came to clothes, they couldn’t put them out on the racks fast enough, with all the donations. And yes, they would sell the occasional vintage item at a much higher price, but mainly, they existed on donations. THEN, someone had the great idea of making as much money as possible by using a “boutique” approach. The money may or may not fund an eyeglass program, and perhaps a shoe program, but those programs were traditionally already in place. Lost is the ability to send someone over there who is down on their luck and just needs a little boost.
The SSL was originally started in the aftermath of Quantrill’s raid in 1863, with enormous loss of life and property. The remaining townsfolk pooled together what was left to share with those left with nothing. That spirit is definitely gone, and I wish they would rename the store.
Locally owned ones tend to be pretty good still. But any chain has gotten a lot more expensive. It’s generally still worth it to me. But these days I only buy things that are either cheap or I have an extremely good idea of the value of.
But I try to keep eye out for small shops and local spots that are still proper thrift store prices
I only buy if it’s a good deal. A lot of stuff is just not a good deal. That’s being said I bought 3 wool coats I gave to people in one day a year ago.
I don’t think you know what upper class means, cause they’re not at goodwill. Unless it’s for a photo op.
Weirdly enough at least for me it’s actually cheaper to buy online on like depop or vinted even with shipping factored in. That being said I feel like a lot of the hate for resellers is just a scape goat for companies, its the thrift stores themselves who are being money hungry and they know people, especially poor people will pay 12$+ for used pants when everywhere else is 30$+
Thrift shopping is like bad cuts of meat: it used to be something exclusively for poor people, but now it’s becoming trendy because we’re all poor.
I think more people thrift shopping is good. Secondhand clothes reduce waste, and offers people more options. At most stores there are only a few garments at a time that will fit a person, while at thrift stores every item fits a little differently and so has more potential to have a lot of clothing that fits. It’s the stores who are choosing to raise their prices, not the people buying the items.
I can agree that flipping is morally ambiguous, though.
$20 for sourdough bread where we live.
Same for farmers markets
I think the main issue is the Advent of image searching with apps like Google Lens. Now you don’t have to be educated on a topic to figure out if something is valuable or worth marking up the price. And you find the interest in vintage because fast fashion has dropped the quality of items. So things that were even cheap back then are so valuable because they’re generally over-engineered or not made with junk plastic.
Like people that pull up in a lexus to a yardstore and haggle over 25 cents?
I don’t even think this is unpopular. With all the popularity in thrifting, goodwill is the same as buying new things from China.
Alternative point of view:
Middle class people cant afford to treat themselves to fancy clothes any more, so if they want a new fit, thrift stores are an affordable way to put together a new outfit.
This is a fact
Been thrift shopping my whole life, both out of necessity and to flip, 35 years. Just like everything else that increases in popularity, demand goes up so does the price. This isn’t a new trend, it’s just on social now. Places still have bins, and you’ll almost never see upper class there. Goodwill priced people out of affordability years ago too.
Selling repackaged muffins from the grocery store here! Get your muffin only 6$! I totally baked it this morning. /s
Seen that in farmers markets same with cookies too
I was horrified to find Vinnies in my area selling business shirts for $30 second hand…
I can get them from Big W brand new for $15. And I can choose my exact size.
You misunderstand the purpose of thrift stores.
The point is to fund charities and keep shit out of landfills.
thrift stores have pivoted to those kind of sales. online shopping has resulted in ridiculously cheap goods for poor people with little time on there hands. one click ans bam shows up in 2 days. why bother spending all that time in thrift stores. only people with time go to thrift stores and theu tend to be wealthoer
This happened to the biggest thrift shop here…for a while. They got to where they were turning away inventory if they couldn’t sell it at high ticket prices. It eventually backfired. They were paying for extra buildings so they could have a furniture showroom and a bath and home showroom. The deal shoppers quit trying and the high end shoppers eventually dropped off and the shop had to close the extra buildings and go back to bag sales and selling the cheaper stuff.
I highly recommend for ppl to join no but groups or check out their free sections of their local CL.
My wife loves having different things to wear and while we get the dough, we are not doing that. So about 20 years ago we started just picking up free stuff that may fit her or sometimes me (I’m a tall person so not always in the cards) and she has gotten major label stuff for nothing from Coach to Armani to Gucci and other lower level stuff. Your mileage may vary depending on your location.
The prices have definitely gone up but ARC still does 50% off sales that can be pretty reasonable. Like $2 for a shirt, $5 for a pair of jeans, $20 for an Instant Pot. There’s definitely less good stuff though and both ARC and Goodwill will literally put a price tag on trash.
I was house poor as fuck when I got my house and the Goodwill allowed us to decorate almost entirely for under $200
I don’t really know where you’re getting that info from
Thrift for me, not for ye
I’m one of those people who gives my old stuff to Goodwill, Salvation Army, ReStore, etc. and I’m always convinced that it’s actually going to someone in need. I just want to get rid of it is all.
YEP
Jeans are $15 at my local thrift store, and they don’t have a dressing room, and they don’t take returns or exchanges.
For $15 I can go to Ross, try-on and purchase a brand new pair of jeans.
They have color tag sales occasionally, but even then somehow nothing but a small handful of items in the store are marked with that color tag ….
The issue is that City Time Thrift Store in Ropeville, TX or some small yard sale in Random City USA isn’t going to ever be able to compete with ebay or Poshmark that has thousands of buyers from all over the world.
So it is dumb that they based their prices off of ebay/Poshmark because even if they sell it online most people look at GW for cheap prices not as a competitor to eBay or Poshmark.
I give it another year or two because at some point they will receive too many donations for their spaces and warehouses and will have to lower the prices or do sales to clear out items. Especially since people just aren’t going to pay $25 for a Target dress from two summers ago.
I’m in Australia and yes, 100%. Even markets are chatting insane amounts for fresh produce.
Spot on. There’s no reason a shein dress made of a fucking tablecloth should be $20, but that’s the kind of shit I see when I’m thrifting out here in the PNW.
Thrift stores have unfortunately become incredibly exploitative of poor people.
They are charging ridiculous prices in some locations. I see 20-30 dollars for items and laugh. Amazon has new stuff for that price.
It’s cheaper to shop brand new than buy from Goodwill.
Blame macklemore for staring that one.
yea capitalism
This is why I love my family’s church. They have a thrift store and price things so fair. Every Thursday you can go in and grab a bag, whatever clothes you can fit in there (literally as many as you can) only costs $5.
Got my kids 7 new outfits each and a pair of shoes. Cost me $10.
I mostly just treat thrift stores as a way to get cheap books and movies, since even the clothes are getting expensive for what they are. Where else am I gonna pick up the entire Game of Thrones book series for eight bucks?
This is probably breaking news 2009.
A few times that I’ve told people how much I love thrift shopping or shown the nice things that I’ve found, they suggest I start selling my finds online.
Its really a testament to the level of capitalism we are currently facing.
Yup, been saying this for years and it just got worse after the whole covid mess. I used to love opp shopping but these days they are hard to support. My local Orphans Aid shop had a dress for $100 the other day, nothing special about it that I could see.
No offense but this is petty shit right now.
Move along.
Not pop so upvote. But i agree. Being poor has been romatized by the rich because of their shame. Also, many ppl do not percieve themselves as wealthy because they have no perspective or are in denial.
Even the non-trendy thrift stores sell clothing for the same prices you see at Walmart. Why bother?
> ‘It was found that, if a suburbanite aspires to move up into the “lower-upper class, he will buy antiques – symbols of old social position bought with new money”.’ Yet social standing may be signalled in a thousand ways (by a car, a modern detached house, etc.), so why is the reference to the past so often chosen as a vector of status? All acquired value tends to metamorphose into inherited value, into a received grace. But since blood, birth and titles of nobility have lost their ideological force, the task of signifying transcendence has fallen to material signs – to pieces of furniture, objects, jewellery and works of art of every time and every place.
>
From Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects, 1968
I used to love to visit thrift shops abroad and get cool clothes I could afford. I’m sure to the locals maybe I was rich but i couldn’t afford tourist stuff.
I think you mean middle class haha.
Upper class wouldn’t be anywhere near a thrift store. They’re too busy being kings.
You speak the truth. I used to love thrift stores but they have changed their M.O. to increase their profits, They are filled with crappy, overpriced junk and will sell the nice stuff online for a good profit. They don’t even hire those needing jobs anymore-self-checkout is the new normal. I won’t donate to them anymore because of that.
This may be different in different countries – but here a lot of thrift stores (we call them ‘sozialkaufhaus’ – social shopping centres) fund their organisation this way. That means by shopping there as someone who doesn’t need to – you help fund a lot of the other stuff that low income families or homeless people benefit from. Like shelters for the homeless. That’s all fundet by these stores.
Seems to be the trajectory for everything. Garage sales and marketplace/craigslist and ebay all used to be easier to find deals on good stuff, but it’s harder than ever, there’s more junk and scams than ever and even when you do find a decent deal, dealing with the people can just about make it not worth it. Moving sales and estate sales can still be somewhat reliable because the seller usually just wants to get the stuff gone and isn’t hustling anything.
This is why we can’t have good things. If something can be abused it will be no matter the human cost.
Thanks Macklemore!
Middle class is just becoming poorer now and we are going to see people with slightly more money than the lower class be willing to pay a bit more. Problem is more and more people are going to flock to thrifting as goods become more expensive.
Around my area seems to be alright. I haven’t seen anything a struggling family could need, like basic clothes, appliances or electronics, be any ridiculous price. Don’t think I noticed any being higher than $20, actually.
I think your perspective here reveals some fundamental misunderstandings about how thrift works.
First, there is no inventory shortage. Quite the opposite. Thrift stores and donation centers are so overwhelmed with donations that many donations go straight to the garbage without even being sorted through.
The cost of thrift is going up, but the reasons for it aren’t “gentrification”.
Things just cost more than they used to. In general. It costs more to keep the lights on. It costs more to rent the building. It costs more to hire people to sort through and tag donated items. The cost of labor is by far the largest expense.
This gets reflected in the prices of thrift goods. It has nothing to do with resellers.
Resellers are also low income people, by the way. It takes a lot of work to curate and merchandise and store secondhand goods. It’s a job. The amount of money that can be made flipping things you find at your local thrift store is modest, to say the least. It’s absolutely not passive income.
There’s also something to be said about how fast fashion has impacted thrift stores for the worse. 20 years ago, people with money bought nice clothes, and eventually donated them. Now people with money buy large volumes of shitty clothes. They’re donating crap that’s worn out and won’t last much longer and they’re donating a LOT of it and the thrift store just can’t keep up
Buying secondhand is a good practice even if you aren’t poor. Keeping clothing out of the landfill is every bit as important and probably more important than “making sure everyone of every income level has equal access to trendy clothes”
If you find a piece of clothing in a thrift store, you should buy it and keep it out of the garbage as long as you can. There is no guarantee a poorer person would have come along and bought that same item before it got cleared out and thrown away to make room for the next shein dump
Unpopular? This is straight facts..
We refer to them as thrift jewellers here lmao
Yeah but this is simply not true. Go to goodwill, salvation army, or actual thrift stores and you’ll see incredibly good deals.
Go to vintage stores and you’ll find overpriced stuff.
I sell on eBay so I am in a bunch of reseller groups.
They all complain that the thrift stores are too expensive to source at now, that they should be embarrassed to charge so much because it is supposed to be low cost to help low income families.
They all take offense when I point out buying to resale is not helping those low income families and is likely the number one reason why prices have went up.
I’m sure nobody’s gonna see this, but I work for a thrift shop. I’m one of 2 paid employees everyone else is volunteering. To say our budget is tight is an understatement. We are required by law to spend x amount of our revenue supporting charitable causes or we lose our status as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We are 100% locally operated, and every cent of revenue that doesn’t go to paying our operating expenses STAYS LOCAL! I’m sure that many other thrifts shops are not as altruistic as we are, we’re so proud of ourselves we’ve probably crossed the line into smug territory. Anyhoo a quick Google search can tell you what thrift stores in your area are 501(c)(3) compliant and that’s a pretty easy way to weed out the bad from the good. Happy thrifting, and thank you for supporting local charities!
Also, the quality of most clothes now is worse so truly hand me down clothes are going away as this whole fast fashion thing runs its course.
There is definitely hype around thrifting now, but I find that there are now 2 kinds of thrift shops, at least in the places I’ve lived (Spain and USA).
People have been saying stuff like this since I was a child. OP is now just hitting memaw age
The sheer volume of stuff that makes it to thrift stores alone means there’s enough room for everybody. Perhaps some folks are just happy to keep perfectly good clothes out of landfills. These days, saving money feels pretty good for lots of folks, I imagine.
I disagree. Have you noticed how packed with clothes these shops are? Plenty for everybody. A more positive outcome is the increase in recycling.
A lot of that shit gets thrown away anyways so at least someone is buying it 🤷♀️