Years ago when I was married I bought an Aquascutum men's camel overcoat from a jumble sale for £1 (to buy a new one in the store it's around £3,000). I'd seen a few men trying the coat on and it going nowhere near them, so I took a chance on it fitting my ex-husband, who's one of nature's whippets and I splashed out a whole pound. It fitted him as if it were bespoke. He still has it, and, being the standard camel overcoat, it'll never go out of style (it hasn't, thankfully, got big 1940s lapels or anything).

Where are these magic suburban thrift shops? I try going thrifting in the massive suburban sprawl here and the best I've found is old Abercrombie (which I consciously boycott) polos. I would like to increase my thrift shop success rate please.

In my experience, it's not suburbs in general as much as it's inner-ring suburbs in particular that have the best stuff (well, that and rural areas). Depending on what you're looking for, though, your experiences may be very, very different.

I love Thrift Stores. Oh yes, I do.

*puts on funny mustache-nose-glasses & trenchcoat, whispers the following from a dark alley*

pssst! If you're in San Francisco, check out the As Is. You didn't hear it from me, though.

*disappears into the night*

I adore the thrifting life myself. My finds are too many to name. Sometimes I sit in my living room (which hey, I think is pretty nice) and look around and total up what I spent on the room's contents. It comes out to under $500. Some reupholstery/painting/rehabbing required on some pieces, but that's half the fun!

Lovely leaf and vine embroidered white linen blouse with mother of pearl buttons, most recently. It was a pound.

The trick to thrift stores, IMO, is to shop for fabric, not for size. Your hands and eyes can tell the difference between the crappily-constructed woven shirts from Target (which will already be warped and faded) and expensive button-downs, or between cheap denim and expensive denim. Since everything's probably been mis-sorted or moved around, there's no point in looking just for your size. Find good material first, THEN check if it fits/is stained/etc.

God, I so love thrift stores. When I realized the house I bought last December was a six minute walk from the biggest Value Village I ever saw, I damn near had an orgasm on the spot.

I've found too many wonderful things to mention, but some of my favourites are a $17 quilted olive velvet jacket I've been wearing for six winters now, a beautiful green glass platter with raised fruit on it for $10, and several chairs I've bought and reupholstered. I got a wing chair and matching hassock for $50 and redid them in dark brown velvet.

Being able to shop secondhand has raised my standard of living significantly, both in terms of what I can save and in having things to use that I would otherwise never have. I've bought several kitchen appliances (a yogurt maker, a crock pot) that are humming along nicely years later, a $5 cut glass punch bowl that my mother has threatened to steal because it's so much nicer than the one she got for a wedding present, a $20 filing cabinet that I painted for $12 (new ones cost about $190), a brass floor lamp that looks so terrific in its cute beaded shade I got at Zellers, a pair of twisted brass candletsticks that sit on my chest of drawers in my room, and a number of pieces of cute jewelery everyone admires every time I wear them. I also have found beautiful pieces of fabric. (They usually stick them in among the draperies.) Right now, for instance, I am wearing a plum jersey skirt that I made out a $2 remnant from some thrift store.

I don't think I could nail down exactly why some thrift stores are so great and others so horrible. The best guiding rule I've come up with is to know your store, and keep checking out the good ones. Keep an eye on the bad ones too, because stores can take a turn for the better or worse.

True that, muddgirl.

Another thrift store tip: when in doubt, throw it in the cart. You can always put it back later, but there's probably only one of them, and if somebody else picks it up, it's probably gone.

And bring a tape measure.

Another thrift store tip: if you're a big guy, and you're looking for clothes, don't bother. Everything will already be taken by folks who can wear a size or two up or who expect to layer things.

Two pair of two-season-old Manolo Blahnik shoes. One pink, one white. The workers must have known they were special, because they were marked as $10 and $12, respectively. I squealed. SQUEALED. Right there in the aisle. Clutched them to my chest and looked around all shifty eyed, lest someone try to pry them from me. They were too small, but I didn't care.

Dang, I wish I liked thrift shops, but they just leave me so *depressed.* I get very morose looking around at all the poor castoffs, relics of bad choices and regretted splurges, or household dissolutions, or deaths. Somebody once loved every one of these things enough to spend money on them! And now here they sit with all the other rejects! It's heartbreaking, I tell you.

(Plus there's always that kind of funky smell in the air, which disheartens me even further...)

Hugh: yeah, mens clothing in general isn't something that thrift stores do very well. To make vast sexist generalizations, I think that men's fashion doesn't have the same rate of constant flux as women's (especially for professional/workplace clothes), and that men are more inclined to wear clothes until they're worn out.

Yep, also all the punk rock girls wear thrift-store men's size 44L sportcoats rolled up to the elbows, no?

But for sure, housewares at thrift stores are awesome. I went to a great thrift store in northern NJ last summer, it might have been in Atlantic Highlands, that had this awesome collection of stuff in a cool old house with a turret I think. I didn't end up buying anything because I'm not the buying type (I'm meaner than a Scot) but there was some great stuff there.

I got a double-breasted, full length brown shearing coat for $50. I looked on the internet once to see what the replacement cost would be and it was well over $1500 US. I've worn that coat for the past three winters. It makes me feel like a Russian.

i've gotten tux tails and ball gowns and some things wore out from wear and some never made it out of the house before having to be returned to a thrift store. Furry hats and cocktail dresses, i miss you all.

I've bought lots of books at thrift stores.

One of my recent best buys was a Vera Bradley microfiber purse that I've been carrying lately. I found it at a Goodwill shop in Naperville. It was from around 2004 or so, in perfect condition, and cost me $9.99. : ) (bag sold for around $65 new)

I love thrift stores. The ones down on the Main Line are just freakin' treasure chests.

Unfortunately, I can't really go to our local one anymore since my mother-in-law started working there. But that's ok, because she likes to go through the stuff they get in and bring me bag loads of crap. I had to draw the line on the second-hand bathing suit she got my girl awhile ago. That's just too icky for me. I'm also not thrilled with the scads of second-hand stuffed animals she gives her either. Especially the day my kid hugged one, looked up at me and said, "This tiger smells like throw up."

I swear the woman does it on purpose just to freak me out.

I've actually found quite a lot of men's clothes there, such as really nice shirts for my father. (He's a pretty standard size.) One time I bought him a green and black plaid wool vest with silver buttons. It wouldn't work on a younger man, but on a tall, lean, silver-haired sixty-something grandfather, it's really sharp.

jrossi4r, have you tried washing the toys?

I had to assemble a mailman costume in just a few hours two years ago for a party I'd completely forgotten about (the premise of the party was that you had to dress as something that began with the same letter as your first name).

After consulting the Project Runway episode website that dealt with redesigning the USPS letter carrier uniform, I printed out some designs and hustled to downtown Santa Cruz.

I was able to find a convincing hat, blue shirt, slate-blue shorts, a tote bag, and a knit blue tie for a total of $3, and a quick stop at the post office let me home-brew my own name tag and insignia for the bag. Black shoes and socks completed the outfit.

Requisite photos (Warning: dodgy beard, slightly alchoholized):
≡ Click to see image ≡

a great thrift store in northern NJ last summer, it might have been in Atlantic Highlands, that had this awesome collection of stuff in a cool old house with a turret I think

St. Agnes'. A standard stop on my visits home.