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Published: April 9th 2012
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Value Village on Logan
This is the Value Village at Queen at Logan in the east side of Toronto. This is the Logan St entrance which is also where good are deposited for collection. Unscrupulous pickers will sometimes wait here for donors and offer them cash for the best items they can see in the would-be donations. Sometimes myself and my friends (who do NOT wish to be included in my travel journalism) will take shopping trips around the city and have fun buying things that we think can sell for more money on eBay.
Its a game.The rules are simple. We each have $50 maximum budget and one month to turn a profit. In this time we are expressly forbidden to promote our sales on our own social networks, like for example my travel blog, as the game is not about how many friends you have, but whether or not you can use your knowledge of antiques to pick the best items and turn a profit on your purchases in an online auction websites. Hence you will se no links to my eBay store or any sales here.
The key to success as an antiques picker is a rare knowledge of Canadian mercantile history
The key to successis finding unique items that will sell for atleast 10x more than you paid . we call that a ten bagger. . Remember the seller has the odious task of packing and shipping the goods and taking out insurance on expensive items. Listing goods on eBay is not cheap either - the Golden Age of being an eBay Power Seller is behind us... But it is still possible to shop for profit in Toronto thrift stores if you follow the proper route and visit only the thriftiest shops.
This is the
Value Village at 924 Queen St. E. (@ Logan) TEL (416) 778-4818. This is where we usually start our purchasing parade as we pick through the most recent donations found outside the store, in the parking lot in the back off Logan st. The freshest used goods are piled up outside here, waiting to be sorted. The picture above is the back of the same store - that is the Logan St community donation center and inexpensive parking lot .
Inside this store there's always a swarm of young teens, mostly female, Queen St fashionistas, - that is to say they are mobile savvy young teen girls that hog the change rooms to model new found clothing, taking pictures for Facebook vindication before they even buy the goods.
The leather jackets and boots and belts and hats found inside this denizen are usually well picked over by
Urban Warrior and Queen St fashion savvy staff members who get first dibs on the best stuff and suppliment their income by reselling the goods in trendy clothing stores in Kensigton market and at Queen and Ossington St .
In the center of the store, which used to be a hardware store, the floor to ceiling clothing racks really cut the light from the windows and the effect is a rather dark shopping experience that's made worse by six rows of single bulb florescent fixtures and no music. But putting all that aside, this place is a goldmine for good clothing, collectible glassware, vintage games and toys, early consumer electronics and unusual housewares.
Salvation Army Parliament Thrift Store, 252 Parliament Street just south of Dundas St E. This busy store is located conveniently close to the trendy Riverdale residential area, and thats important for donations. Weathly doners are really only conscious of one thing when donating their used merchandise to charity, convenience.
Although they are generally not big sellers for me on eBay, this store has a terrific selection of used clothes and accessories. There's a wide array of dress shirts and odd brands of blue jeans in this location, and in many cases the merchandise still comes complete with designer labels and paper tags from much more expensive clothing stores in nearby shopping malls.
The aisles are well organized and well maintained by staff. The store is bright and sunny and the music is set to the radio, CHFI classic rock.
Salvation Army St. Clair West Thrift Store, 665 St. Clair Ave. West just east of Wychwood (near Bathurst st). This store is a really excellent hunting grounds commemorative issue media POP promotions and such ie. Petro Canada gas station souveniours from the 1970s, showing Olympic Team support and the commerative McDonalds cups that mark major motion picture film releases, and local sports trophies sponsored by early professionals and calendars and local business directories to
help find me a dentist in Toronto. Along with financial service materials - I once saw the same cushy green chairs in here that TD bank advertises under the slogan of comfortable banking. I didnt buy the green cushy chairs because of my inordinate fear of importing bed bugs into my condominum.
Salvation Army Parkdale Thrift Store,
1447 Queen St. W This store is located in the heart of Parkdale, which is one of the poorest neighbourhoods of Toronto, and yet there is where I have found highlycollectibe treasures and won our little game in months past... Don’t be fooled by the poverty that you see allaround this location. There are luxury homes in every direction, and there’s a large Polish and Ukrainian community just north on Marion, and MacDonell streets. This fact is responsible for my greatest discovery - I bought a wooden spoon rack complete with nine Sterling Silver spoons for forty six dollars. One of the spoons had a good inlay maple leaf on the handle. Less than one month later I sold that item to an
Ottawa gold buyer for many times what I paid for the whole rack. The money wasnt important - winning the game is what mattered to me.
Goodwill Store, 28 Roncesvalles Ave. @ Queen St. W Finally, we generally end our sortie at an old standby in the west end. In the shadow of the Edgewater Hotel, there is another very busy spot for used merchandise donations. This Goodwill store has all manner of good quality unique merchandise including high technology items like old personal coimputers, Polaroid cameras and
glass food containers with vacuum sealed lids.
Clothing donation charity thrift stores help Toronto
It has been said that the employees of these thrift stores are the biggest benefactors of the charity clopthing donations, but be that as it may, that's still pumping good tmoney into our local economies. Below is a picture of Maria who works at one of the thrift stores that I have listed in this post.
She has a good life because she has a good job, because she works in this bright and sunny store and gets paid a good wage. It was early in the trend that charity donations stores started to pay good wages to employees and
business management consulting suggests that the employees should be the biggest shareholders in each company's economic, fiscal, moral and financial well being. Just by paying ten or fifteen people above average wages at every location, they are helping out The City of Toronto.
If you measure the staff at each of the Goodwill stores, Value Villages and Salvation Army stores you will see that the industry does impact the over-all well being of the city
These ECCA yellow bins are NOT donating profits to charity of any description. The owner of this yellow bin is profiting from our generosity and hurting the legitimate charities that depend on the kindness of wealthy doners whose only criteria for donating is convenience.
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