Salvation Army Thrift Store (Good Place to Find Parts)

[BUCKETHEAD]

I don't know if you have one in your town?

[APFelon]

Mine isn't.

The SA near me has racks upon racks of old clothing, along with shelves full of coffee mugs, flatware, dishes, knick knacks, and hideous old kitchen decorations. You know, the stuff that people couldn't GIVE away at a garage sale.

But unlike the Goodwill, they DO accept old televisions (and stuff with televisions IN them) so I stop in from time to time to see if someone "donated" an arcade machine... Not yet, but I'm patient.

APf

[BUCKETHEAD]

As i said yours may not be the same as mine.

But yes mine has all kinds of televisions too.

And yes i suspect an arcade machine one day will turn up at mine too!

I have seen everything but that there.

There is a GOODWILL store in my town also. It has more clothes, dishes and

junk like you metioned in it,  Than electronics.

However i did pick up a SEGA GAME GEAR in it,  With the carrying case and a game

for $2.00 one time.

So that was good!   

[BUCKETHEAD]

Also on the humorous side.

The SALVATION ARMY store also sell's used UNDERWEAR !

First time i seen that stand full of them.  I about lost it !  LOL!   

There were all kinds of women just piled around it. Going thru all the pairs!

There were also bra's in it too !  And had a sign on the stand that said

.25 a pair and .5 with hole/holes

My question is simply this? Who the hell would buy underwear that someone

else owned?  Or wore? 

These were also well to do looking women buying them.

Not homeless looking women.  Most people i see buying stuff in that store

Are wealthy looking people.  And are pulling up in nice cars.

I guess that is why they are wealthy.

[missioncontrol]

the  salvation army and goodwill stores in my town are crap....

I go in there everyonce in a while hoping to find something, but no luck..........


and the underware thing yuck       

[Witchboard]

I drop by my goodwill on occasion.  Picked up up a PS1 for $7.  Took it home and it worked great.  Glad I still have those mod chips left over. 

[BUCKETHEAD]

That's what im talking about!

Great find! 

[APFelon]

I'm not saying that everything in the "common" thrift stores are crap. I picked up a few items that grocery stores / liquor stores have donated, like bar mirrors and promotional items. I bought a HUGE "Nilla Wafer" gorilla (get it? Nilla Gorilla?) for 99 cents and my son loves the hell out of it. I also got a 20" Keebler promotional mirror for 2.00$ and a large Bacarte mirror for 9.00$. Not bad scores at all.

APf

[BUCKETHEAD]

That's great too!

I have picked up other non electronics items. That i love very much!

But i ain't touching their underwear !   

[Thenasty]

a used underwear, OMG...whats next, used tampoons .2cents each ?

[Kremmit]

My local Slave-Nation Army store rarely has any computer stuff, but I did get an arcade game there.  "Rush 'n Attack", not working.  Marked for $50, but I picked it up on 50% off Friday, so it was $25.  Got it home, plugged it in, and it played blind.  Turned out the monitor needed a new flyback, and it got a capkit at the same time.  Works great now! 

I later discovered that the cab it was in was originally an Exidy "Victory".  I'm in the process of de-converting it.

[cholin]

Last time I went was maybe 2 years ago, but theres one right beside a buffet, so I can see myself going soon.  Last time though, they had TONS of clothers, clown uniforms, turbans, anything, kinda like halloween.  They had no computers or electronics.  Then, at one beside a pet store, there were about 200+ scanners, 5-in-1's, monitors, computers, etc on a shelf.  I wasnt quite into this MAME scene then, but man I could have gone crazy in that store!

[BUCKETHEAD]

Yeah they are great!

Should have picked up that turban for halloween!

 

[spiffyshoes]

We have a GoodWill Computer Works near my place and it is an awsome place to pick up misc. electronics.

[Setabs]

Just curious, why the Slave nation?

My local Slave-Nation Army store

I managed to find An NES and dreamcast before at my Salvation Army.  I dont go to goodwill that much because they are to expensive.  Lately I have been trying to find consoles at garage sales but have not had any luck.

[Witchboard]

I dont go to goodwill that much because they are to expensive.

It seems to be the opposite here.  Salvation Army wants like new prices for junk.  I haven't been in years though.

[Hoagie_one]

my local SA has a private company that rebuilds old computers and sets up a stand in teh store.

over priced

[BUCKETHEAD]

Mine is not rebuilding them that is for sure!

They have CD - ROM drives laying around, Empty cases, power supplies

whole computer's ETC..

Any where from Pentium 1 up to 4

great for MAME.

[AlanS17]

The nearest salvation army thrift store is 20 miles away from me. Maybe I'm lazy, but I really don't feel like driving that far.

Once I picked up a laser printer for free, though. It just needed a new toner cartridge. ($60) My brother picked one up with a working cartidge for $15. This was before I moved to DFW though.

[SuperGunGuru]

I've read many a story about finding games at a thrift store. I was at my local Goodwill last week, but they had nothing game related except Mortal Kombat for Genesis. We also have a Salvation Army store but I haven't been there in a long time. I'm thinking I should go at least to see what kind of stuff they have.

[BUCKETHEAD]

Yeah you should go.

But stay away from the used underwear     LOL!

[forbiddenlyrics]

I've found tons of great old console stuff at my Goodwill. We also have a Goodwill outlet store where all the stuff that doesn't sell goes and it sells for super cheap. I get NES's and SNES's for $3 and games for less than a $1 there. No arcade stuff yet but I'm hopeful.

[Thenasty]

Yeah you should go.

But stay away from the used underwear

[RayB]

ditto that, specially the ones that has visible stain marks in them

[JamIt]

ditto that, specially the ones that has visible stain marks in them 

Those ones sell for premium prices.

Don't you mean "peed in um' prices"? 
Sorry couldn't resist

[clanggedin]

There is a place out here called "Deseret Industries" it's like a Salvation Army, but for Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Idaho and maybe other states.

A friend of mine picked up 2 non-working cocktails cabs a few weeks ago from one for $20. It took him less them 10 minutes to get them working. He got an Astro Fighters and a Galaxian clone.

Apparently they have 1 to 4 cabs at any  given time. They do charge more for the working ones though. He says they sell them more for market value.

[Thenasty]

He got an Astro Fighters

could you take a pic of this game. There's seem to be a confusion about what the screen should be if its BLACK or BLUE. Some claims its supposed to be BLACK and in MAME is blue.

[PoDunkMoFo]

I was talking to my dad and he said the thrift stores around here (Central California) won't take any computer stuff.  I guess things like crt's and other electronics are considered by the wise & flaky state of California as hazardous and if they can't sell them they get stuck paying the disposal fees.

He was telling me the only computer stuff he sees is really old stuff the probable had lying around since the late 80'S.  He tried to donate some working dot matrix printers, some speakers, & other misc. stuff & they flat refused to take them.

[BUCKETHEAD]

Interesting....

Im glad my SALVATION ARMY,

Doesn't behave that way 

[bobbyt]

It's all about timing with the Thrift Stores...  My supervisor told me about them, as he visits them almost every week...  He got his current computer there...  For around $100 (complete)...

I've been checking myself, as I need a PC to install mame & a front end on, however I've not found one yet...

[BUCKETHEAD]

Come to the    Greenville / Greer

[ChadTower]

Just find out where your town recycles computers when people throw them away.  A lot of towns bring them to a central dropoff location, or require people to bring them there for recycling.  The dropoff attendant a lot of times will collect a fee for taking them, but will give them away for free since they are already paid for and it does cost the dept money to dispose of them.

I know in my town I could find old PCs all day and night that way, there's a trailer that tends to be full of them.  The only requirement is that one take a whole machine (not monitor etc) and not try and take parts out.

I wonder if there would be a market here for cheap old hardware.

[RayB]

I prefer what they do in Toronto. There's an organization called Reboot which takes donations of equipment, gives you tax receipt, and then they refurbish the stuff and give it to schools or poor people.

[ChadTower]

I prefer what they do in Toronto. There's an organization called Reboot which takes donations of equipment, gives you tax receipt, and then they refurbish the stuff and give it to schools or poor people.

Yep, except here, donating computer equipment is so much more hassle than it's worth to the donator.  For some reason recipients always expect support and expensive software and such with it... plus the donator is liable if, say, one of the machines causes a fire.

As an example, when I worked at Kodak, they had just cut more than half of our organization.  We had hundreds of monitors, computers, etc sitting around.  Too old to sell but still perfectly functional, they were worth more as a tax writeoff than anything else.  Kodak would NOT donate them to anyone because of the potential liability and expectation of support.  This would have been enough machines to keep 20 schools stocked with functional hardware, yet they threw them all away for the tax writeoff.  They wouldn't even let employees take them for the same reason.

[RayB]

Blame the lawyers for that one.
Though how hard would it be to just ask people to sign a short waiver??? Weird.

[ChadTower]

Having your lawyers draw up a waiver and review it costs $$.

[Flinkly]

i worked at fred meyers a couple years back as a grocery clerk.  every week we would throw out hundreds of pounds of perfectly good food just because the stupid number on the container said it wasn't good the next day.  everything from gallons of milk to a whole case of yogurt.  our food counter threw out alot of good food too (around eight o'clock, one of the guys would give you twice as much as you wanted of most anything, since it was all getting thrown out anyways, and then for some reason he got fired). 

if it wasn't for stupid lawyers, all the local homeless shelters would have enough food for everyone, everyday.

[RayB]

if it wasn't for stupid lawyers, all the local homeless shelters would have enough food for everyone, everyday.

Not just lawyers though. It's the whiners. The whiners who would have the gall to complain that homeless people are getting free groceries when the rest of us have to pay. The lawyers usually represent the whiners. heh Don't we live in a wonderful society...

[ChadTower]

No, the laywers usually represent someone trying to get a quick payoff because the food donated included a single spoiled item that made someone sick... as if donating $4000 worth of food is an evil act because there were a couple of dented cans of beef stew.

[Thenasty]

in my book

lawyers = crooks

always finding ways to make $$$ even if they have to LIE LIE....

RIP Jonny Crooklan  whatever his name was....Hope your in the right SPOT