HugeNerd

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.

I know this model. It's ~30 years old, can make a decent shot. This particular one didn't smell, looked clean enough, had all parts, powered up, but decided to leak coffee powder everywhere once I got it home. Pump doesn't prime but I think it should be an easy fix, the pump makes the normal pump sound. Worst case I need a 30$ gasket kit and a weekend of futzing around. Not bad huh?

I saw it when it came out and only remember that I thought it was pretty good. Maybe I'll watch it this weekend.

A good find this afternoon I think. 10$ for these two, and Strangelove is in a metal jewel case thingy. Pretty good.

Star Trek The Motionless Picture through The Undiscovered Country plus The Captain's Summit for 7.50$. That's decent

Not me! Maybe not the best selection, there were more Warner Brothers discs, infamous for bit rot (it's real, even their regular DVDs die prematurely), I passed on those. I have a few and they are all dead.

[For those who don't know, HDDVD was the HD format that lost the format wars of the early 2000s. There are very few readers any more out there. The XBOX 360's external reader is one, the Toshiba machines are the others. I have both!]

Pretty lame I guess but this is pretty fancy and looks like unused and unopened. It really slowly, smoothly AND silently opens up.

Now to find magneto-optical disks.

All 6 seasons with 6 still sealed. Nostalgia, baby. I miss the '90s!

A real horroshow Bluray

A nice hat trick for today. I happened to be there when they were bringing fresh meat to the shelves. Picked 'em right off the cart. I mean "The Prisoner"? Come on now. Cosmos 2014 on Bluray?

Hey for 4$ who can complain? Each disc is immaculate.

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.