Thrift Store Tips and Tricks (How I Lost $140 with a Single Mistake)

If you live in an area like I do, where there’s definitely a bunch of competition and thrifters out there who are looking for books, clothing items, shoes, and similar items that you’re looking for, then you definitely want to follow this tip.

Imagine right now that you’re in a thrift store, and a cart comes out with fresh inventory. Imagine you see one of those carts come out, and it’s just sitting there.

What do you do?

Well, I’ll tell you right now that what you need to do is rush those bins. Why? You do that because that’s brand-new inventory. Your competition hasn’t looked it over, so that’s where the money is going to be.

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Looking Over New Inventory
Now, although that’s a tip, that’s not the tip I wanted to share with you. What I really want to share with you is something more specific that has to do with brand-new inventory. When you see the cart coming out, instead of just looking at one bin and thinking you are going to go through it, take a glance at all the bins before you decide. Why? I have a real-life story I want to share with you.

I was at Goodwill, and three different carts came out with six bins each, so there were essentially 18 different sections that I could look in. I walked up to the first cart, poked around in one bin, saw that there were books, and just started scanning. Now, there’s usually no problem doing that if there’s something profitable like a bunch of Super Nintendo games or something amazing.

Getting Scooped
And what happened was that my competition came out; he’s actually a good friend of mine. While I was looking through the bin and scanning books that weren’t even worth money, he pulled out a $100 Monopoly game right next to me. And then he followed up with another $40 board game.

So the lesson is that when you see the carts come out, rush to them—that’s number one. But number two is to give all the bins a quick scan. What you’re essentially doing is looking to see if there’s anything that is really obvious that is just screaming out money. You have to throw it in your shopping cart so the competition doesn’t grab it.

Lesson Learned
When I think about what happened, I can’t believe I didn’t look in that bin. It was right next to me. If I would have just taken two seconds, that money would have been in my possession. That was a day’s pay right there that I lost out on because I made that simple rookie mistake.

Now, it definitely went to an amazing guy, and I’m glad it was him. But it does hurts when you lose out on money.

Don’t let this happen to you. Start scanning everything first because the money is in those fresh bins, and if you don’t take advantage of that opportunity, somebody else will.