this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2025
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Montréal's thrift scene

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Discuss Montreal's thrifting landscape, and thrift stores besides Renaissance and Value Village. Discutons des magasins d'occasion à Montréal, et les magasins autre que Renaissance et village des Valeurs.

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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.

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[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago

It just occurred to me that they may also be simply adjusting to what sells the most. I only have my limited view of the reality of thrift stores, and I realize there probably aren't too many people hitting up the Value Village hoping to find VHS tapes or 5.25" floppy discs...