Value Village is another big warehouse type thrift store. Typically their items are color-coded by style. If you’re looking for a skirt head toward the skirt isle and you’ll find your color preference as well as the particular length (really makes shopping easy in such a large store). This store and Goodwill are pretty much similar in merchandise setup,  (this is my opinion as a consumer, but I’m sure an employee from each store can tell you some differences) the only thing that separated the two (as far as I could see) was PRICE! Value Village was waaaaay cheaper in comparison to Goodwill. As Goodwill has gone up (within the past few years- I’ll say around 2014 that’s when the prices increased [maybe a little earlier or later, but not too far from that year] definitely after the market crashed and everybody started shopping at thrift stores) you could still find good low prices at Value Village.

Well, I went to Value Village on Tuesday with $20.00 to spend hoping to come out with a good number of items, five things at least…*Blank stare*… I came out with two items! Two!!Wait-a-minute! Are you kidding me?!

I knew going into the store that I was going to have a certain amount of time snagging stuff for me and holding my child’s attention. Usually when I’m in this mode (in and out) I know that I don’t have time to lollygag, and whatever I pick up needs to be worth it. This also helps keep dollars in perspective 😂. This ‘crunch time fil-a-bag’ shopping is not unusual for me.

Well, as I was on my thrift hunt I saw these prices that just seemed a tad bit higher than I remembered. High enough to make me raise my eyebrows.  If I saw something that I did like I had to glance at the price and determine if it was really worth it! In my head I’m thinking these are Goodwill prices! Sure enough as I kept quickly sifting through the hangers going from isle to isle I heard an employee saying to another employee how ridiculous the prices were. “How you gonna expect to sale clothes when you done jacked the prices up?” Her words, not mine.

A was able to find a Target brand dress shirt and a really really cute black dress that looked as if it had never been worn. The shirt was $4.00 which is very good, but the DRESS- $9.00!! I know what you’re thinking, “that’s cheap!” and you are correct, that is cheap in comparison to buying it new at a retail store, BUT when I could have once purchased the dress for $5/$6 dollars, $9.00 is a big jump. That’s close to $10.00; because, unless there is a sale the prices is going up, not down. There were a few other items that were priced pretty high. Bottom line is I was correct- they did go up on their prices.

It is what it is, right? Every business has to survive, and now that thrifting is EXTREMELY popular it was really only a matter of time before these well-known thrift stores started capitalizing on this trend of thrifting.