The Mall is Empty, but the Thrift Stores are PACKED!

Hey, didn't mention this earlier, but I meant to.

My ex felt like getting out a little on Saturday- his birthday- so we went to the mall.

Saturday afternoon. Dead as a doornail. By that I mean, oh, less than half of what one would see on a normal Satuday afternoon a few years back.

He wanted to stop by  a couple of thrift stores on the way home, and if it hadn't been for his handicapped parking permit, due to his cancer, we would have had to wait for a spot at Goodwill.  The other one we stopped at was just as busy.

My question:  at what point do the awesome clothes that people are still buying (though more slowly now,) and transferring to the thrift stores, begin to dry up and the thriftstores start looking like they did when I was a kid- like something the cat dragged in?  Instead of pretty much like a nice discount store, like they do now.

A quarter or two behind massive wal-mart store closings most thrift stores will probably close up shop too; right around the time new stuff becomes uncommon. Flea markets, however, will probably become popular by then.

Some thrifts are price gougers too.

You can say that again!  The thrift stores are now MORE expensive than even the high-end department stores when they have their end-of-season sales!

I'm not sure how they do it, what with the prices they pay for rent, but thrift store shirts are nearly $5.00 here, sometimes more, and you can get a shirt at Dillards for $2-3 at the end-of-season sales.  Or all the time at TJ MAXX and those type of stores.

I don't buy much in the way of clothes, but I was shocked to go with my daughter to the discount places and find the clothes to be less expensive there than all of the thrift stores in town.

But somebody is sure buying the nice stuff, because the thrift store shelves are PACKED.

You want some new clothes for real cheap, lose 10 lbs and check the back of your closet and drawers. 

The price hikes started after people began selling on eBay, in my experience. I remember when I first started selling on eBay (back in '98 or so) I could find some real bargains at the thrift stores in Honolulu, where I was living then. I bought a ton of designer aloha shirts and muumuus and sold them to people on the mainland at a profit. My best find was 3 velvet coats/jackets that looked to date before the 1950s and were covered with gold wire embroidery and beads - I bought them at Goodwill for $20 each and resold them for $150-250. About 2000, when everybody was on eBay, the prices went up by maybe 30% and it was harder to find 'the good stuff'.

A lot of folks buy clothes online, nowadays. That may be why the Malls are empty.

Donating clothes to charity-run thrift stores could allow a full tax deduction of their purchase price in the US, does this happen elsewhere, too?

I haven't actually been into a thrift store for years. not because I have anything against them.  I really don't much like shopping, especially in the city.  We tend to mostly buy local or online.  I need to find one though because I actually have a whole lot of things to donate.  We're having a big clean up (again).