Goodwill and Salvation Army getting picky
 

Goodwill will not take older tvs at all.Guy took one look and refused everything I had with me.I have been cleaning out an old shed full of old tvs and vcrs that were slowly getting ruined by dampness and weather and full of dirt.I dumped a lot.Bryan saved the tube and hybrid tvs and I'm going to sell a few later tvs at auction.I saved a few late 70s to mid 80s tvs that worked ok and were in good enough shape(I thought) to donate.So I went to the Salvation Army.I guess they got tired of being stuck with non-working electronics.He had to plug everything in and check it.Rejected a little 5" battery or 12v tv outright because of no power adaptor with it.A kid about 8 or 9 wanted it so I showed him where the batteries went and that one got saved.Almost rejected an older 13" tv/vcr combo because the vcr wouldn't take a tape.No way I was gonna wrestle an old monster like that to change belts only to give it away.But he took it.The tv part worked perfect.He did reject a little 13" mid 70's Sharp that I know works great on Satellite because it will not get UHF reception.It has an 8 preset UHF tuner and something is not allowing you to tune in the channels.Most are stuck near 83 and just can't get it down to where the locals are.All local reception is UHF and the Salvation Army store doesn't have cable.And he rejected 2 older cd players .One because I didn't include the power cord and one because it had a crack in the front panel.Both work.Does anyone want to save the Sharp?It's got to be mid 70s or older.It's heavy as lead so I imagine it's got a metal chassis holding those circuit boards.It does have instant on though.:thumbsdn: .I can see the filaments glowing through the vents after I turn it off. I have never taken the back off.It's in pretty good shape cosmetically.I just don't know how that RCA got all the way to the floor that I alerted Bryan to in the local Goodwill when they wouldn't take my much later tvs.Some were remote.This area needs more collectors of 70s and 80s stuff.I hated having to dump so much stuff but I can't hardly give away perfectly working tvs and vcrs from that era.I'm a tv fixer,not a collector.I collect records,record players and jukeboxes.I gave up even trying to sell fairly modern 90s era tvs at the flea market in 2005.Just no money in it anymore.I was lucky if I could get $50 for a 27" with remote and they had to make sure it had composite video input at least before they would buy it.If it had woodgrain sides and had only RF input I couldn't even get $35.19" tvs of course were even worse.Maybe $25 with remote if you were lucky. I let quite a few go for $15 before I got sick of it and quit.Back in the early 90s I could sell used electronics like crazy.$100 for a used vcr.$75 for a 19" tv with knob tuners.$100 or for one with remote. $150 for a used console tv with knob tuners.Even $25 for a 12" black and white tv.Quite a bit of the stuff I sold still had tubes or were hybrid even.The glory days are gone..sigh.

They're turning down a donation? Sheez. And the GWs or SAs would sell the power adapters from the 12V sets separately (they've got plenty there), what gives? But I sorta understand some of their logic, they have to pay to move the trash (the ones that are "dead" - or left for "dead"). Used electronics are gone in an instant here - be it the BPC Soundesign boombox or the typical Sansui G receiver.

And btw, the GWs and SAs in my town knowingly sells some broken crap, so...

My neighbor across the street had a large quantity of varied items that he wanted to donate to get rid of. There were SEVERAL places that came and cherry picked just a few items each, leaving the rest (SA?, GW?, VFW?, PHV? that I know of) just sitting, so he let my next door neighbor look the stuff over before it hit the curb. My next door neighbor (Dennis) offered me two house fans (turned down, I have 6 already), and left 2 cordless phones at my backdoor (they were GOOD, with the bases, handsets AND CHARGERS taped together, with just a bit of cleaning and (for fun) I made 2 new battery packs and now I use them daily).
Then the passer byes got into the act, I saw them waiting for Dennis to finish. That night he collected the detritus from the curb and chucked it into the trash can. I'm not even sure what was in there...

After I fixed his 34" tv in the basement a few months later he GAVE me a laptop worth $200 for parts on ebay.... got a video card it needs on ebay for $30, and now I have an xp laptop (WHEN I get time to swap that video card).

Guess what I'm saying is that the charities around here are REALLY picky...

They've had this restriction on us for awhile now. We are not allowed to dispose of sets in the garbage, they have to be taken to a re-cycler, and they charge you to dispose of the set --up to 40 dollars depending on the size!!

Thrift stores won't take old sets because of the possibility they don't work or will fail before they are sold. They don't want to have to pay the recycling fees, so they just don't take them.

Makes for finding TVs around here difficult. Unless you have connections or can manage to hit all the estate sales before 10am --it just isn't happening.

I think it's mostly the leaded glass from the crt, with some consideration also for the lead in the solder joints.

Luckily there is still a thriftstore around here which will take literally anything donated to it and put it out for sale at a fair price...have bought plenty of TV's, tube radios, projectors, pianos, organs, appliances etc. here. They even had a baby grand piano one time but someone beat me to it...
I have noticed TV's do not sell very well at all though...almost all of the sets they get are 1980's models and end up having to be discarded even though they try to sell them, working, for $10 or $15.

Goodwill and SA do seem to be cutting back on the amount of TV's they sell...SA seems to have very high prices for some odd reason. Saw a Mitsubishi 35" set with some discoloration in the screen for $300.00 at SA, I don't think so! I used to be able to get old Apple II and Macintoshes at Goodwill for $1.99 or so but they don't seem to be accepting many computers anymore.

The Salvation Army here no longer accept ANY electronics or electrical appliances here. In part due to the costs associated with dumping all the dead stuff and in part due to some stupid OH&S requirements. They used to get some interesting stuff and occasionally the guys on the floor would tell me where to go to get stuff that they had left behind. Now they only time I get stuff from there is when I pick up "donations" that are dumped in the parking lot.

The Savers chain accept some stuff and have it tested to comply with the OH&S rules, but they never seem to have anything good. That said even before the changes came in I never found any good audio/TV stuff at savers. They used to be good for vintage computers and video games though, I got both my Amiga 1200 tower and Amiga 4000 there among other things.

There is still a supposedly charity run resale shop at a local dump, but what is actually accepted and put out for sale varies depending on exactly who is on. I've been there on days when better stuff is crushed in the scrap bin than is out on the shelves. They cut all the leads in their effort to comply with the OH&S rules (which can be a real pain when you have to patch or replace the multipin cables connecting 2 halves of an organ).

Unfortunately cutting leads is becoming more and more common. I've seen notices for curbside garbage collection state that all leads must be cut. I'm seeing more and more stuff with badly patched leads (wires twisted together and taped, active/neutral swapped, even active/earth swapped!) show up.

Surely someone is more likely to get electrocuted this way than if they simply plug in the TV/stereo/whatever they find as is.

If the OH&S nutjobs get there way you won't even be able to buy a mains plug (with the new style flimsy easily bent insulated pins as they can't sell the older type anymore) without an electrical contractors license. Will they be asking me to hand in my soldering iron next as I don't have the proper permit? :rant:

Is the sharp color or B&W, and is it tube? Instant on tube set could be cool, nd i'm in the area (almost..)

Got pics? :)

I can't believe it but I've gotten 4 emails from people wanting the Sharp tv on Freecycle.It should be taken by 1 of them tomorrow.(Monday the 18th)I hope I don't get any complaints from them.The tint and brightness seems to drift from one power up to the next especially if it's moved.Probably dirty controls on the inside but I don't have time to deal with it.I kinda like the anonymous nature of the Salvation Army when I'm giving away something I don't want to deal with but that works too good to throw away.I gave 3 tvs to a lady I couldn't sell and she claims none of them worked.I know they did.She was probably trying to get local stations with the switch set to cable. I had just loaned one of the tvs out to an older lady while I obtained a part for her tv.The older lady was tickled she didn't have to do without tv.Or she may have been trying to get them to work with a remote.All were digital tuning but one was obviously not remote and I'm not sure about the other 2.The one I loaned out didn't work with any of the codes I tried on a universal remote.They were early 80s tvs so probably too old for the codes if they were remote.I've seen lots of early 80s tvs that had digital channel and even digital volume control but were still not remote.No remote sensor to be found or opening for one.But another lady from Freecycle I gave 2 80s Sonys that wouldn't bring a $2 bid at auction was tickled with them.She was keeping 1 and giving the other to a Katrina victim that moved up here.

one thing that annoys the $h!t out of me is that Badwill has gotten all post-9/11 "we're protecting your security" paranoid, they don't even sell Apple iiEs because they might contain someones SSN, rachel rays recipies, pictures of grandma, and assorted government secrets. They send them to some place where they wipe the HDs and sell the computers for a vastly inflated price. They dont even sell printers, because heaven forbid if grandmas mapquest to the bingo hall is jammed in it. Its hard to find anything computer related, except for the usual keyboards and mice coated with soda and sticky crap.

other thrift stores are a little more relaxed, but it's NO FUN when you see a mint looking late model compaq deskpro thrown into a bin and have some fat mexican lady get in your face and say "NO FOR SALE" when you approach it

In the past (before all the changes) I've gotten some interesting weird computer stuff via the Salvation Army. One day years ago I saw the guys unloading some stuff and went straight over. Picked up a couple of Toshiba 4900CT (the first Pentium laptop) and a couple of Xterms. The guys unloading told me they left a load of stuff behind and gave me the address. I drive down there, it turns out to be a BHP research lab that closed down. Dual processor PCs, Sun workstations, Macs, all loaded with weird DSP and coprocessor cards. A couple of Phaser solid ink printers, networking gear. The 2 guys left on the site just wanted some beer and I could cart it all away. It took me 3 trips to get it all home (me in a station wagon, a friend in a pickup). Those were the days.

They used to pull the "not for sale" thing on me at one place I used to go. For a while I could get away with grabbing while they were looking and taking to the other end of the store where a different person would sell it to me. Eventually they caught up to me though.

I went to the salvation Army store in Joplin mo. yesterday and they had more electronics than I had ever seen there before. There were a few console tvs several table models and 4 or 5 console stereos. They wanted 45.00 each on the stereos which is kind of high. There was a tube Capitol console stereo that was almost mint that I wouldnt mind having. They said it worked. The literature was still with it. But I really dont have the room and am not sure I would want to pay that much.
John.

I think other folks have made similar observations here before, but I too have noticed that most of the smaller thrift store 'chains' and independents tend to be less "picky" about taking old TVs and such, so will often tend to have better pickings for such things.

A few other things (which many of you have probably also noticed) regarding Salvation Army and Goodwill stores:

- Goodwill and Salvation Army stores are organized in "districts," and each district seems to have their own guidelines regarding accepted donations and item pricing. I've noticed that Goodwill stores in some districts are waaaay pickier and priced higher than Goodwill stores in other districts, for example. Also, some individual stores within a district may tend to end up with certain types of merchandise more frequently than other stores.

- It appears that Goodwill and SalArmy tends to have one "primary" store in each district that's larger than the other stores, and this is often (but not always) the store that will end up with the lion's share of the "interesting junk".

- I've noticed that some SalArmy districts (at least used to) have a designated "AS-IS" store. These featured newly-donated items that were deemed too old/not good enough/too cheap/broken/whatever to be sold in their "regular" stores. I suppose getting rid of such 'worthless' stuff via the "AS-IS" store was cheaper than paying the trash company to haul it away. These were great-- stuff like old TVs, radios, old stereo/hi-fi equipment, classic microcomputers, cameras, and other such stuff popped up there all the time, and generally at giveaway prices. Unfortunately, it seems like most of the SalArmy "AS-IS" stores have been phased out or become far less "trashy".

- Some Goodwill districts have a "Bargain Bin" store or something similar, but most of the ones I've seen appear to be mostly stuff-that-was-in-a-regular-Goodwill-store-but-sat-around-unsold-for-too-long, rather than 'new' donations that the powers that be deemed not worthy of being in a regular store in the first place.

i agree wholeheartedly on both points....

Our local Salvation Army store(Salisbury,MD)used to have a 99 cent bin they rolled out at 5pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays.It was usually rushed as soon as they opened the doors.Lots of computer stuff and other things that didn't work.I got a Hotpoint tv from the bin once. Can't believe it survived all the people fighting over stuff before I got it.They always left any older tv or record player.Even grabbed some nice recievers and turntables after the fighting was over.Some things that came out of the bin worked but they just put it in there because it was old. I have a nice vintage 1960 Magnavox console stereo that came from that store too.That was a little more than 99 cents...lol.
In the last couple of or so almost all the old computer stuff has disappeared from both Salvation Army and Goodwill in Salisbury,the console stereos have disappeared and hardly any tvs either.No good stereo equipment or speakers is showing up in either store.All I ever see is cheap cheesy stereos(usually all in one with cd on top)Hardly any speakers except real crappy bookshelf ones,some vcrs and phones.The Goodwill is nearly all clothes.They just remodeled the store and the clothes just about took over while the book,record and furniture section got even smaller.The electronics is one small shelf in the back.Hardly even worth perusing anymore. At least they still have records. But I find less and less worth having and they charge a $1 an lp.Sometimes I get lucky and find a few 45s.