“But some of my favorite and most useful household things have come from thrift stores.”
our local ReStore always has several pieces of very high-quality solid-oak furniture for ridiculously low prices ...
I’ve seen from my own experience how much money can be made by reselling things this way. I bought a really pretty Thai tiffin (traditional lunch box) for less than ten dollars. Someone is selling it on Etsy for $75 - and it’s not even as elaborate as mine:
On the other hand, the Internet has made it much harder to find nice things at really good prices; the people who run these stores have become very savvy about searching out the real value of things or what people will pay for them in different markets. In the past, they sold things somewhat more ‘ignorantly’..
(There is a man I’ve seen in my local thrift who carries his phone and checks the going price online for everything, before he buys.).