Thrift store and secondhand finds

I like to hit the thrift stores from time to time looking for clothes, older electronics, music, or just the random unexpected item I can't live without. These are some of my best scores to date.

VitaMix 3600

One afternoon in 2013, while the rounds of the K Avenue thrift stores in Plano, I stumbled upon an incredible find. It was the base and motor portion of an old Vitamix 3600, which dates to sometime in the late 1960s. Vitamixes are renowned for their power, longevity, and long-term reliability, and after plugging it into an outlet I was able to confirm that the motor worked as well as ever. Unfortunately, there was no price tag on the base, and the rest of the unit was missing. I took it up to the checkout counter and asked for a price, only to be told that the manager would need to look at it and get back to me. A couple of days later, I was able to finally get a price quote... ten dollars. I sourced a vintage carafe, lid, and Action Dome off eBay (not dirt cheap, but still much better than trying to buy a complete unit) and using them I was able to assemble a completed machine. As I already owned my own high powered Vitamix blender, I gave the thrift store one to Hannah (she of the lemonade post), who I knew would appreciate it. Top notch new Vitamixes can retail for $500 to as much as $1,000.

Star Trek: TOS captain's uniform top

Around 1998 I was hitting some thrift stores with two other guys when we stopped at a Salvation Army in either Balch Springs or Garland. While thumbing through a rack of shirts, I was surprised to find a long sleeved, Star Trek original series style Captain's uniform for $3.99. Or the top part of one, anyway, as no pants were included. That was hardly a deal breaker, as I could easily pair the top with some black slacks or khakis and I would be set. And that's just what I did. I even wore this outfit to work once or twice. Unfortunately I no longer have this item, as I either donated it or gave it away (I can't remember which) many years later as it no longer fit.

HP Probook 4400s (via 5miles)

Over the years I've had an on again, off again hobby of purchasing older, used laptops at deep discounts and restoring them. I particularly prefer the older ex-corporate machines, as they tend to have socketed, rather than soldered, parts as well as a wide availability of upgrade hardware available via the secondhand market. One day in the late 2010s, while looking through listings on 5miles, I found a post advertising cheap used laptops from abandoned and foreclosed storage units, and I found upon my arrival that various machines were available and the asking prices were insanely low. I only purchased one, paying $10 in cash for it, but I returned the next day and paid another $20 for a damaged HP ProBook 4440s with a busted display. Connecting it to an external display (and breaking into the existing Windows 7 installation), I confirmed that the rest of the hardware was just fine, and I wiped some truly cringe inducing material off the desktop and hard drive. After replacing the display assembly with another one off eBay, everything worked great. Ultimately, after a series of major upgrades (more RAM, SSD, better CPU and wifi card, and a Blu-ray drive) this machine became a core part of my home entertainment setup, serving as a media machine for watching online video and video files as well as foreign Blu-ray discs on my 50 inch television.

Multiple Blu-ray players for about $5 apiece

The summer of 2022 saw me browsing through a South Dallas area Goodwill electronics section, when I came across a collection of nearly identical model Sony Blu-ray players cast haphazardly about the shelves and priced at about $5 apiece. While it's certainly not uncommon to find used optical media players at thrift stores nowadays, these were of a compact size and priced low enough that it was worth the risk of buying them to see if they could be cleaned up and brought back to working order. I walked out of the store with two of them, and returned the next day for a third. As expected, the units all worked just fine after a quick cleaning with a laser lens cleaning disc and the application of some sanitary wipes to clean up the outsides. After a quick purchase of some inexpensive replacement remote controls and power adapters from eBay, I was able to gift these to some friends and family.

Carole King: The Collection CD set

I found this at a thrift store in early April while looking through the books. Someone had put it onto the bookshelf, and it was priced at only $3.99. The box, discs, and included CD booklets were all intact, so I snapped this up. For what it's worth, I also found a hardcover book detailing home remedies and money saving tips that I found to be a good value as well.

CyberPower 1500VA Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS)

The Vitamix was of course an incredibly lucky find, but in truth I had already bought an even older one a year or two earlier off eBay for $150 and I didn't really have a need for another one. One late afternoon in May 2023, while browsing the shelves of a Goodwill, I stumbled upon something I had planned to buy a year earlier but hadn't due to financial limitations, a CyberPower UPS. In fact, it was the exact model I had intended to buy new before an extremely expensive car issue sucked nearly ten thousand dollars out of my bank account. Buying electronics at Goodwill is always a dubious prospect, given the "no return" policy and the oft-inability to confirm things are in full working order before taking the items home. This unit was priced at a hefty fifty dollars, and that was a pretty steep amount to wager on something that may not even turn on or hold a charge once I was able to give it a full test. But I had a suspicion that the likely issue with the unit was a dead battery, and that someone had gotten rid of it after it refused to hold a charge any longer. I plugged it into a wall outlet to see if I could get it to power on, and after multiple fruitless attempts I was on the verge of giving up when I decided to try one final time after about letting it remain plugged in for about fifteen minutes. Sure enough, the display came on, accompanied by a long beep indicating no power to the battery, and I decided to take it home with me. Two replacement batteries later, courtesy of Amazon, I had a fully working unit for less than half what a new one would have cost.

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