Salvation Army vs. Goodwill

My mother is the queen of Salvation Army shopping. She searches out just-like-new designer clothing, and her favorite is Liz Claiborne. She knows which day of the week offers discounts for seniors, and she knows what color tags are on special for each day of the week. If she spots something she wants, she’ll wait for the right time to return to the store. Since she's retired, there’s plenty of time to do it.

My grandmother (her mother) was an expert grocery shopper. She may have traveled to four different supermarkets, but her coupons were in order as she followed the bargains.

It could be there’s something in the genes. I don’t know. I generally don’t use grocery coupons. But I will frequent a thrift store now and then.

At one point in time, I was embarrassed about thrift store shopping. Not anymore. These days, I read anything and everything I can get my hands on about successfully selling on eBay, and this issue has been brought up. Here is an excerpt from one of the blogs I follow about reselling books.

“Charity shops don't exist to sell to disadvantaged people, they raise money to help disadvantaged people. This is a common misconception, and one I did not understand before I started going to them.”

“The Salvation Army is glad for every penny in sales, which funds their programs. They don't care who buys the stuff -- needy people or the general public.”

Read the entire article by clicking here.

I’ve learned a lot, and I’ve experienced my own success (on occasion) through following much of that advice -- which includes buying at thrift stores to sell on eBay.


My most memorable purchase from a thrift store was a lot of five soft cover judo books. Two of the books have a resale value of over $100 each. One sold within a couple of weeks and the other currently awaits a buyer in my eBay store. I didn’t know the value or the liklyhood of profit through resale when I picked them up. I acted on a hunch based on some of the buying strategies I’ve learned.

Back to my recent experience shopping at the Goodwill Store in Norwich...

I normally frequent Salvation Army Stores simply because I've never lived anywhere near a Goodwill Store. Since I work in Norwich, I thought I'd stop over at lunchtime to check it out.

Is it me, or are Goodwill stores a bit pricier than Salvation Army stores?

I did buy two clothing items for my 3-year-old daughter. Both were priced at $3.99. One was a darling green corduroy jumper dress with candy canes on front for the holidays — I love it! It looks like it's been worn maybe just once. Perfect!

But it’s not a complete outfit. I need to find a shirt to go along with it.

The second item I bought was a pair of denim jeans. These are cute, but worn at the knees. At $3.99, I wasn’t quite sure about buying them. In looking over the condition of this pair of pants, I’d guess that at Salvation Army, they might be priced around $1.99.

Books at the Goodwill were priced quite a bit higher than those at Salvation Army also.

The gap in pricing is enough to make me more selective. Whereas at Sals, I’ll fill up a carriage and not think much about the prices, at Goodwill I thought about it.

I suppose if I can use an item myself, it's still be a bargain. On the other hand, if I see something I suspect might sell well online, I probably won’t take too much of a chance with goods from Goodwill.

The other thing I noticed was that in general, items appeared to be of better quality at Salvation Army. Since Goodwill also sells goods online through a Web site of their own, could it be that things most likely to sell easily online are pulled from their stores?