Originally Posted by
gridplan
I don't know about you, but I don't give to charitable organizations so their employees can turn a profit. If that's what's actually going on, I'll turn the profit myself. And I can't imagine that a manager at Goodwill would be happy if he knew his employees were buying up the best items so they could flip them. What's left is junk. It's bad for business. People will be less inclined to crawl in the car and drive to one of those stores if they think the best stuff has been cherry-picked by the staff.
The vast majority of the managers at these stores have only a foggy idea of what is a good vintage bike and what's a crap vintage bike - much less having any idea of what's a fair price for them. My wife worked at three Salvation Army stores for about a year for four or five managers, and none of them had a clue - although one had the sense to ask me about some bikes they got in.
If the bike gets priced at $25.00, it doesn't really matter who buys it.