Frugal….not cheap!

Every Tuesday, my mom and I have breakfast and then we go thrift store shopping.  Her house is probably loaded with way too many porcelain cats because of it and mine is loaded with way too much costume jewelry, but we wouldn’t give up our thrift store shopping for anything.

As a result we have seen the ebb and flow of the economy play itself out in the thrift stores.  I started going to swap meets way back in the 1980’s to sell the stuff that was left over from the estate sales I was doing.  Most every weekend I was cleaning out houses and having sales and then the following weekend taking the left over stuff that nobody wanted to the swap meet.

Several years later, I am shopping at thrift stores to keep clothes on my youngest sons back. Years later, I have a few bucks in my pocket and am going to those same thrift stores to buy nick knacks to decorate my newly purchased house.

It’s been the last 10 years that I really have paid attention to the ebb and flow of the thrift stores.  I had amassed way to much stuff in my house, but  I was till finding the cutest collectible stuff.  That’s when I started to sell it on eBay.  I had a grand time doing it and even taught others how to do it, but somewhere about 5 years in, I started to see a change at the thrift stores and garage sales.  Everyone was realizing the value of their items because of eBay and I was no longer able to buy things  at a low price.  At every thrift store and every flea market, you would hear someone say, “If you don’t like my price, I’ll just sell it on eBay.”

I began going into my own stash of collectibles that I had packed away to continue to sell, even though I was still trying to find things on my daily trips to the thrift stores.  Then I started noticing something else.  There were so many people selling on eBay that the collectibles that used to have high value were dropping.  Where once you had to spend years looking for a particular collectible you could find on eBay in minutes.  The market was falling and eBay was too blame.

I was no longer able to make a living selling on eBay and I quit, but I didn’t quit buying.   As time passed, I saw there was less and less stuff to  buy anymore.  Where a few years earlier I had my pick of vintage knick knacks, now I couldn’t find them anymore.  It was like all the collectibles in the world were sitting at eBay auctions waiting for someone to buy them.   I couldn’t even find my vintage jewelry.  Not one Trifari necklace, not one Napier earring.

For about a year, I gave up on thrift stores, and garage sales and swap meets and then one Tuesday, my mom said, “you want to go to the Salvation Army, I hear they got a 50% sale on.”  Now, my mom and I go for the fun of it.  We talk and shop for hours and spend time in the car looking over our treasures and fantasizing about their value and where they came from.   Tomorrow is Tuesday and I’ll be back at the thrift stores, still looking for my collectible jewelry and my mom looking for porcelain cats.

And over the last few weeks I have seen a change.  I have manage to find some vintage Coro clip earrings  at the Vincent dePaul and a 1960’s coffee mug with a donkey on it. Looks like the tides changing again.