Montréal's thrift scene

I try to find interesting items while thrifting. Over the last year I managed to find, incredibly, a vacuum-tube oscilloscope, various decent cassette decks, some ancient chunky VCRs^*^ for decoration purposes, usable Win 10 PCs, a bunch of physical media, a bean to cup coffee machine, even usable 500G and 1T external hard drives for like 15$. This stuff is just fun junk to play around with, and it allowed me to get a sense of offerings from Value Village and Goodwill.

I also got a bit of a kick from the thrill of the hunt. What will I find?

However in the last month, I've noticed a drying up of these items, a shrinking of the physical media sections, and re-arranging their store's layouts to increase the clothes offerings (nothing wrong with that).

Is it seasonal or have high prices for fun items made people check before donating? Or are thrift stores in Canada becoming more like American stores with "premium" items being offered online?

Guess I'll never find dbx vinyls at Goodwill now...

(*) Way too many dried or disintegrated belts and rollers in older VCRs. They simply don't work anymore.

Not sure if this falls into "thrifting". This store used to have pleasant deals on materials but I'd say in the last few years they went nuts with the prices.

The only deal I ever got there was an IKEA filing cabinet on wheels in new condition for like 20$. The kind of IKEA stuff that had heft to it, not the newer stuff.

No wonder they closed, charging twice the price of new for donated items. Far worse than Renaissance or VV.

I noticed the "coming soon" sign a while back and now it's open. It's definitely a sense of "déjà vu", it looks pretty much like a Value Village in its layout, prices are the same. Lots of clothes, pots and pans, a few shelves of electronics, and lots of DVDs and VHS. Plus it's a 5 minute walk from the St Jacques Renaissance.

In the last few months I decided to see what I could find on DVD and Blu-ray. It's a matter of luck and persistence but I do find good stuff now and then. Anyone else find missing Blu-rays from combo Blu-ray and DVD sets? Or DVD-Rs instead of pressed? And how do some people manage to scratch their discs so impressively?