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Sometimes you start to notice the same people at thrift stores. Maybe during yard sale season you start to notice the same shoppers at different yard sales as well. Eventually, you also start identifying the resellers out of these repeat customers. So…does anyone else have a “nemesis”? We do!
So we’ve been going to a Goodwill about 30 minutes away every Sunday for a while. My wife likes to shop for herself there in the 99 cent tags sales. I’ve always suspected that someone was getting there at opening and buying a lot of 99 cent items. We usually didn’t get there until 3-4 hours after they opened. Since they started this “specialty section” up where they mark name brand stuff up to $10-25 an item, we decided to show up at opening so we could be first to raid the 99cent tags on this rack – of which there were ALOT.
So the first week we get there about 5 minutes opening and there is a lady already with half a buggy full in these racks. Me and my wife tag-team racks opposite her. She notices and starts panicking. She quickly hops in front of my wife for a quick browse on her rack and then runs over to get in front of me for a quick browse. To say that pissed me off a bit is an understatement. Oh, it was on! We had found the opening Sunday picker.
So next week we show up about 5 minutes before opening. She’s already there in the parking lot tapping away on her phone. We parked right next to her and both of us looked over to make sure it was her. She looked up and saw us and a sheer look of panic crossed her face. She quickly grabbed her purse and literally ran over to the door to be first in line. At this point I’m cool but my wife – oh yes, the scavenging bug has bit her and she is DETERMINED that this lady ain’t gonna win as a matter of principle. So the lady rushes in when they open the door without even getting a cart. My wife and I grab carts and go to other racks than the lady and start grabbing the 99 cent stuff. She again panics and tries to get in front of us. Too late lady, we are fast. Now that you’ve crossed my wife the only option is total annihilation or until you submit and go to the other Goodwill down the road.
This past week my wife even recruited our 10 year old to hit these racks for 99 cent tags, but we were one-upped. We got there about 3 minutes before opening but the store was already open! Turns out, the lady has made friends with one of the workers and he opened early for her. Not only that, but he “held” a pair of half off Miss Me jeans for her. I overheard the two of them talking about an hour later. War. Escalated.
We’ll be there at least 15 till next time and we got a whole minivan of kids. Bring it lady!
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We have a new nemesis who haunts our local thrift shop. She’s an older woman who seems to go every single day and buys by the cart load. The workers say she’s a hoarder. She told me that she sells on etsy, but I cant imagine that she can handle the kind of volume she purchases.
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She can be both a hoarder and seller with unrealistic expectations and perceptions. Her need to hoard could be entangled with her perception that she is goig to sell the items. Unfortunately, those in hoard mode tend to have great difficulty letting go of what they have hoarded.
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Yep, she definitely has good taste (mixed with a lot of bad taste). We dont mind competition, but it is too bad she buys so much stuff if it’s not actually going back out into the world. Who knows though, she could be a “girlboss”.
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Sophia Amoruso’s eBay store became a multi-million dollar business before it went bankrupt:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinavuleta/2017/12/21/from-nasty-gal-to-girlboss-sophia-amoruso-leads-a-generation-of-women-who-mean-business/#28229ed57da9 -
Jay,
Wow! What a powerful story and powerful article. We need to have more articles like this in here. It would be great to have a main forum under the Main Forums area where people can create forum threads sharing motivational articles, examples, and websites in order to remind others to keep going. In order to remind others about the fact that even when it gets hard and you find you are not where you want to be or that things did not work out as you planned, you can try again and keep going. I think this kind of main forum area would help when a member is experiencing a “what the heck is going on?” moment. -
I’m not a super motivational dude, but I appreciate it when we all support each other. There are other reseller blogs, Facebook groups, and Youtubers out there who’s main focus seems to be “you can do it because you’re worth it!”
No problem if people post useful motivational articles here, but our main focus is helping each other sell better. So we like to get down to business and into the weeds. I dont see many places like that out there that are no non-sense. We assume that everyone that comes here has figured out how to be an adult and has dealt with their issues.
As I’ve always said, if someone is really struggling with hoarding, finances, personal life, getting out of bed, etc…then therapy is the best method to solve those issues.
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Instead of growing the company organically, she took a bunch of venture funding to grow the company quickly. They began selling new clothes instead of just vintage. Burn out.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-nasty-gal-20170224-story.html
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I have the odd “Single Serve” nemesis that in an empty thrift store will need to be within my personal space looking at the same 4ft section. Really frustrating when looking at racked clothing and you jump to another aisle to avoid them and they all of sudden need to be there as well.
My regular nemesis is the cashier at a local Goodwill that questions the prices on items when I bring them to the checkout and has to get the manager to confirm the price on the tag is correct. My wife thinks that she just “likes” me and wants to spend more time with me…LOL
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Retro Treasures,
This is laugh out loud funny. This could be a TV episode which would go down in infamy.
Just thought to share. If you really want to change the dynamic, go early with your wife. Be first at the door with the lady. When the doors open, you,your wife and your kids “rush” a whole other area of the store where this lady can see you. Take your time. Be intentional. Look at everything in the section. Look with the same aw, deep interest, and intensity in which you look at the clothes. Have only one person assigned to look at the clothes. Send them to the clothes once your time and energy has been established in this new area. Do this again the next time you go. Most likely, this lady will drift toward the area you are in. While the two times you go, you may not wind up with as many clothes, you will have changed the point of focus, energy, and control.
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you might have a nemesis, but you might also BE someone’s nemesis too right??
(yeah i hate the “single serve” kind too, the ones who never move and block the aisle and don’t care that there are other people in the store etc etc)
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I inadvertently became someone’s nemesis at an estate sale last month. As I was making my way out with a box of snapshot photos, some random woman waiting in line starts glaring at me from far away. While passing by, her face turns red and she starts fuming and screaming at me, “HEY! THAT’S WHY I CAME TO THIS SALE! I CAME FOR THE PHOTOS!” I just sort of shrugged and looked confused at her as I passed by.
The sale had already been going on for 3 hours by the time I purchased them. Even if it had been the first hour: oh.well.
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Walk up to your nemesis, give them the 1000 yard stare and say THIS as menacingly as you can.
As many found out too late, Walt don’t play.
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When I get to a really good garage sale or estate sale I go into my ZONE and have laser focus…Brad Pitt could be standing next to me and I wouldn’t notice! I went to a garage sale a couple of years ago that was run by a sweet little old lady getting rid of some of her treasures super super cheap. I immediately went into my picking trance, grabbing items right and left and making a pile by her checkout card table. It had been open an hour and I was shocked all these great things were still there…there were a lot of estate sales that day which most dealers here go to instead of garage sales so I was lucky. A woman and her husband walked in and looked at the stuff I was taking to my pile and she turned to her husband and said in a loud hiss….SHE MUST BE A DEALER!!! Like it was a bad word!! I wasn’t dickering on prices and I wasn’t grabbing anything out of anyone’s hands. I was just minding my own business and doing my thing and making this sweet lady happy because I was buying so many of her treasures. And they were amazing! I don’t keep much from my picking but I did keep two things from that sale.
One of my things is vintage books and I do see the same book dealer at a lot of the estate sales. He tends to buy differently than me so it’s not a big problem. However, there’s a big time dealer in my area…she has a HUGE instagram following and specializes in vintage Christmas and vintage Halloween. If there’s an estate sale that advertises lots of vintage Christmas I know she’ll be the first one in the door and get all the best stuff. She lives and breathes vintage kitschy Seasonal so it’s slim pickings for the rest of us (literally and figuratively.) 🙂
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There are gangs of nemesis buyers where I live. On 99 cent days, they come in and purchase everything at that price regardless of the condition. At the goodwill outlets, they work in crews and block off entire sections with their carts. There’s always book buyers with scanners at the book bins. It’s very competitive. The same people are there everyday.
I made friends with the cashier at the goodwill outlet, passing her little trinkets I found while thrifting, small tchachkies, and a little cash at Christmas. In return, she greatly points me in the right direction if there are good items in the case, or counts any ceramic at 29 cents.
Even with the crews working the bins though, they overlook vintage items regularly.
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Goodwill Outlets used to be one of my main sourcing spots for many years. From 2003-2011 or so, they were my jam.
In the very early days, they were amazing. Hardly any other resellers, nothing had been sorted by Goodwill for resale online, at least half of the items had never even made it into a retail location.
Eventually, the hordes came in by 2006/2007. I blame this on the invention of the scanner. Before the scanners became available, you had to know books. Scoutpal was around in 2005/2006 before the actual bippity boop scanner, but it was cumbersome, slow, and not really that useful. You still had to know what to look for so you wouldn’t be stuck in a Goodwill for 8 hours a day.
By 2007? Everyone wanting to sell books had a scanner. The goodwills were teeming with book dealers, and goodwill started to notice. They already had an online bookstore out of their Portland location, but individual stores selling online started to spread across the country at that point.
If all you had to do was pick up a scanner and point, anyone could do it. Especially the thrift stores. That was when bookselling became less fun. I love books, but I hate the aggressive competition that considers them to be merely commodity items. By 2011, I had enough of that toxic environment and had to stop going.
Of course, even with the scanner, there have been lulls in selling. The 2008 financial crash. The introduction of fba. All of the new sellers brought in by the lure of fba. All of the changes amazon has had to make to cease the neverending flow of fba sellers. Huge fee increases.
A lot of people left at the outlets are from the early days. They’re trying to maintain their old style of making a living, even with all the new competition and fee increases. They ate working harder for less, and becoming more outwardly hostile ad they do so. It is a negative spiral.
I don’t even understand how after all of the years of going daily, that they don’t have enormous backlogs to draw from and can be a little less desperate. It’s so weird.
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Not really a single scavenging nemesis, but a team of them at the Goodwill bins. They are awful! The bins actually hired security guards to keep them in line which has barely made a dent in their insane behavior. I swear, these people would elbow their own kids in the face to grab a pair of shoes they are after. I have to psych myself up to go there, but that’s where I source hats in bulk so every month or 2 I go. The same exact teams of people are there every single time I go.
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I have a vintage book and needlepoint kit nemesis. I hate that guy! It’s bad enough that he goes after my favorite type of item to sell, but he’s a total crabby pants the entire time he’s at the auction. Most of the regulars will chit chat, but not this guy. He just scowls and grumps his way through the whole sale.
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There’s a guy like that who receives the donations at the local Savers. A young guy always scowling and sourfaced. I delight in smiling great big at him and saying Hi there! There’s my favorite cheerful helper! Let’s see that big smile of yours! Then he actually smiles at me—it’s hysterical! Hahaha
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I met one picking friend who has an antique booth and likes harder and bigger Steve type items – instruments, midcentury furniture and audio. I keep telling him about SL. He knows two ladies who have booths at this place who they like ALL of the same stuff I do. They do thrifts but mainly estate sales, so they are my future nemesis. I have actually flipped a couple of items from their booths, but the prices are too steep generally. There is some guy who tries to get everyone to save the tiki stuff for him – grr. He must be quite successful because I never see any of it. One of the estate sale companies lets all of the dealers in the day before the public. 🙁 Still, I’ve been to other cities where it is way more competitive or the stuff is new made in China mainly, so I’m grateful. It’s expensive to live here and very gentrified so we have far more donors than pickers.
Most of the regulars here are a decade or two older than I am, so I stand out and get noticed even thought I’m very part time. One lady was whispering to her partner about me recently because she saw me turn up at another location and he was like – “don’t worry, there’s so much stuff”. Lately I’ve been seeing young people in their 20s together in packs working the clothing and sometimes fumbling around in hard goods. It’s pretty amusing sometimes to listen to the newest guy pickers evaluate the merch.
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The old man pickers who whistle the entire time are enough to make me leave! Strategy? Perhaps. 🙂 I should learn to whistle.
Estate sales are where I see most of the nuts. Small spaces/crowds/bad parking all elevate the scarcity mind-set.
If I see other resellers, I always get a look at what they’re picking/researching. Gives me a good sense of what to look for in future. If I see hip young adults thrifting (for themselves), I always try to eavesdrop on what is “hella fresh.” -
My husband and I definitely start seeing the same people, we see them at thrift stores and estate sales. There are a few that are sketchy and very rude. They like to try to get into our personal space. There was a guy who came and introduced himself to me, said he likes to know who is competition is. At an estate sale he offered to help me carry things to my car because, of course, I was trying to buy the place out.
Competition is healthy, it certainly helps us get out of bed earlier to get to the estate sales and thrift stores when they open.
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