Deals waiting to be had, for pennies on a dollar

Editor’s note: Emma Ayres will be a junior when she returns to Imlay City Schools this fall. She has an interest in journalism and has agreed to share some of her work with our readers this summer. Emma is also involved with the school’s yearbook and newspaper.

Inflation isn’t limited to just gas and food prices; it has also found a way to impact once-frugal options, such as thrift shopping and buying second-hand.

As resellers storm their local Goodwills and Salvation Armies, making big bucks on coveted brands sold at a bargain, the stores catch on to their game.

Every day, people now find that big brands can no longer be bought for the usual two to three dollars.

Instead, resale stores sell name-brand merchandise for upwards of fifteen dollars per item. Not many know there’s a way around this pricing discrepancy.

Most resale stores, such as Goodwill, do not have the means to keep up with the ever-producing factories and fast fashion trends that hold our world hostage.

With China and the United States being the top two nations when it comes to mass production, overproduction is almost guaranteed.

Between millions of families all across the United States, all donating to their local Goodwill stores, and the overstock they receive from companies like Target, Shein, and its many sister companies, the back room at Goodwill and other stores alike are always packed to the brim with industrial size garbage bags of donations to go through. The overstock has to go somewhere. Where does it go?

Both Goodwill and Salvation Army have outlet stores, often referred to as the bins.

The overstocked merchandise is brought to an outlet facility and rotated constantly in giant bins on wheels, hence the name “the bins”. The overstock is then sold by the pound.

Most of these outlets price the items in three separate categories. Books, glass, and housewares, all ranging between as low as fifty cents to roughly a dollar seventy-five a pound.

The merchandise is not sorted before being brought out; the bags are simply dumped into large containers and combed for anything dangerous before being wheeled out onto the floor for consumers to pick through.

Resellers often spend their afternoons at the bins stores when sourcing for inventory because of the astronomical difference in price.

I often accompany my mom, a reseller, to her favorite bins store in Flint to see what interesting rejected merchandise I can find.

One thing I can always count on is finding an abundance of fake flowers and foliage. Instead of going to Dollar Tree and spending a dollar twenty-five on a single flower, I buy them in bulk.

My current goal is to create an accent wall made of fake flowers and foliage. This objective is a thousand times cheaper when I can get hundreds of flowers and vines for just under ten dollars.

Others have reported finding brands such as Guchi, Lulu Lemon, and Louis Vuitton on a rare occasion, buried in the bins.

My mother looks for big brands like these and has been successful on multiple occasions, making upwards of one hundred and fifty dollars off of something she spent one to two cents on.

Whether you are like me, and look out for the odd but useful side of things, or go for the name brands, it is better to source things for cheaper rather than break your bank account. Your wallet will thank you!