Yesterday I was lucky enough to purchase a lovely vintage ivory, graduated bead necklace in a local charity shop whose manageress is, allegedly, notorious for not letting anything of value get by her – nor allowing it to be sold for the benefit of her employers. I don’t know if that’s true, but I’ve bought very few pieces in her shop during the three years I’ve been frequenting it.
It is definitely getting harder to find a real bargain in high street charity shops. Charities are constantly alert to opportunities missed. Specialist employees sift through donations for valuable vintage clothing, vintage accessories or antiques before they reach the shop floor and anything deemed interesting is double-checked with experts and auction houses. Many charities now have their own online presence or use Ebay to maximise income.
Some charities have their own dedicated bookstores and shops in upmarket areas of cities like London that they load with designer and vintage clothes and accessories sorted from donations at their provincial shops and warehouses. A charity shop on Westbourne Grove, West London, close to the famous Portobello Road antique market, regularly has an unruly queue of bargain hunters outside, waiting for opening time, to snap-up a designer piece displayed prominently and cleverly in the window since closing time the day before. I’ve stood in that queue myself, on more than one occasion and elbowed my way inside, only to be disappointed.
One of my favourite charity shops in the UK is the Red Cross in Felixstowe, Suffolk. Felixstowe is a dull coastal town on the east coast with a very large container port. I don’t know why, but this shop always seems to have a very good piece of vintage hanging on the rails whenever I go there. For years I’ve been guaranteed a good winter coat and a couple of cashmere sweaters if I drop in early in the fall and there is always the chance of a nice piece of home-ware too.
Second favourite is another Red Cross outlet on Forest Road, Walthamstow, London. Quite close to William Morris’s house and museum, Lloyd House Lodge – always worth a visit – this shop, for me, has been a treasure house of clothing and home-wares for many years. Like all charity shops, it is not as good as it once was, but I would go a long way out of my way to visit it and often do. Five years ago I bought two paintings in this shop for £4.00 ($8.00) that I sold for hundreds and I never visit without buying something.
Unfortunately there are a few charity chains that are now no more than retail outlets for purchased goods and remaindered books, with a few – very clean – donated pieces scattered amongst them. Books are sorted into men’s titles and women’s titles, cheap jewellery is carded and hung on revolving stands and nothing – no matter how rare – that is damaged is ever put out for sale. I asked about this once and was told that people bring damaged things back. After that, I asked, in several charity shops, if they would keep interesting damaged pieces aside for me to look at. That was two years ago and I’m still waiting to see the first piece.
Although I know I will never make a living from charity shops, I cannot pass one without going inside and I enter each one full of optimism. During the past twenty-five years I’ve bought wonderful vintage clothes, beautiful vintage jewellery and vintage accessories from charity shops all over the UK. From a shop in Elgin, Scotland I even bought a Chinese fourteenth century, provincial Ming dish – a bit more than vintage that. It was not as valuable as you may imagine, but very exciting purchase all the same. I will continue walking into every charity shop I can find, no matter how well donations are sifted for the vintage treasures I am seeking and I will always enter full of optimism, until the last one closes.
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