Originally Posted by
wrk101
While the thrift store closest to me gets a mountain of donations, they also have a huge number of customers. Their parking lot looks as busy as the nearby Walmart. I have donated stuff, drove around the building to park, and by the time I entered the store, one of the "semi-pro" flea market pickers had already grabbed it. This thrift store has no storage, so donations are priced immediately and are out on the floor in a flash. Even the junker garbage bikes don't last a day. If you don't happen to be there the moment a decent bike goes out, forget it, its gone.
I have seen a couple of pro pickers hit the shoe department, like a swarm of locusts. In a couple of minutes, just about every pair is gone. They must have bought at least 100 pair. The store wheeled out a rack of jackets once, and before they could put them on the store shelves, a picker grabbed the entire roll out rack, and bought all of the jackets....
That's insane! I've seen a similar scene play out at the as-is outlets when they open in the morning, people are lined up at the doors and there's a full-contact race to the shoe bins. Pretty entertaining! A couple of the more active local bike flippers have a few thrift shops where they do the same thing, but it's a bit more civilized with the exception of one sociopath.