$40,000 painting left at Goodwill

[eleny]

In The Baltimore Sun online:
"Alert employees note something special in Cortes street scene amid donations

It's not unusual for buried treasure to be found at a Goodwill store, but most tales of fantastic finds emerge after a customer has left the store with a bargain-priced item, only to find out its true value later.

This time, though, the piece in question wasn't priced and put up for sale - and as a result, Goodwill Industries is $40,000 richer."
http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/arts/bal-te.to.goodwill25jun25,0,5888229.story

The link to the photo of the painting http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/arts/bal-te.goodwill25p120080625050051,0,7037507.photo

[Duer 157099]

1. Read that last week. It was inspirational

That's what kicked me into gear, plus Night Owl's find.

[eleny]

2. Even the small photo of it is so pretty

The flowers appear all lit up. Just beautiful. I wouldn't even mind having a print of it.

[grasswire]

3. well, this ticks me off

It used to be the draw for thrift stores -- thinking that a treasure was there somewhere. It's what brought many people in to shop. Now staff is gleaning stuff out to sell at auction. I can tell you that I would never bother going to a local goodwill, because on shopgoodwill.com I see the local store is selling everything there that I would have hoped to find at the retail outlet. Postcards, photos, sheet music, etc. No point in going to their store.

Here they even skim stuff off other stores and concentrate it in one store that happens to be way out in suburbia, in a well-heeled part of town. Decorators are shopping that store, I'm sure.

I wonder if the payoff is greater for them this way than if they just put stuff out and let buyers have at it. They've gotta pay administrative costs for special handling and someone to list items and mail them and keep up the web site, etc.

[eleny]

4. I can understand how you feel

My ARC store has a section up front with cabinets filled with items they must consider finer things. They don't always know what they're doing as some things only look old. But they don't appear to ship them to one specific store. The only thing that bugs me is that they moved to a new location. It's a larger, cleaner store and things aren't in as much of a jumble. But I like messy jumbles. The old store was where I found my best fun finds. It was more of an adventure.

I haven't been to a Goodwill in years. Maybe for the reasons you talk about. Maybe they cull stuff out and send it to a she-she-la-la part of town.

[Duer 157099]

6. That's true, but here's the flip side

There's only so much research those folks are willing to do. If something is obvious, has a tag or a mark, then it's usually easy for them. So, when I see marked things at a store that I know does this culling, then often I figure that they looked it up and it's relatively common or not selling for much on ebay, so I pass it up too. I've confirmed this many times. Over time, you learn which stores are doing this and to what degree, and you adjust your methods accordingly. It has really kept me from buying lots of things. At one store, sometimes they even print out an ebay auction for the same/similar item, probably to justify their pricing, and I always think "whew, they saved me some time".

I still find treasures, it's just changed some of the stratgies involved. In particular, I like to look for unmarked things that I recognize.

As for how they determine which store to send things to - I think about that, wonder what criteria they use. For example, in a nearby town that has a reputation as an antiques destination, do their thrift stores tend to send more items they think would appeal to the antique shop owners who may go there, or do they concentrate on essential household stuff for the rest of the people? I don't yet know the answer, haven't gone there yet.

But I do know for sure that they rotate their inventory from store to store - I've seen things from one store turn up in another after a few weeks.

Darn. I wasn't going to go out looking today, but coming here always gets me in the mood. Plus it's a good garage sale day...

[zabet]

5. Goodwill runs their own online auction site now...

http://www.shopgoodwill.com/