Thrift Shop Employees Are Revealing The Most "Interesting" Things They've Seen Donated, And It's, Quite Literally, A Mixed Bag
As fast fashion takes over the shopping scene, thrift stores have become a trendy (and potentially eco-friendly) alternative. Of course, thrift stores predate YouTube hauls and TikTok, and their actual purpose is to accept and resell gently-used goods at affordable prices for charitable causes.
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Given that they accept a plethora of used goods, it's inevitable that some strange, interesting, or downright wild items pass through. So when u/fran-farmers-revenge asked, "People who have worked at Goodwill or other thrift stores and processed donations, what's the craziest thing you've found?" many thrift shop employees (and shoppers) came forward to share their finds:
1."I had a mate who worked in one of the bigger Lifeline stores in Australia. A woman came in to donate five large, clear plastic storage boxes. My friend looked inside them, and there were thousands of beautifully hand-painted Warhammer pieces. He was shocked and asked her why she'd donate them. Turns out, they were her son's, and she couldn't keep them in the house anymore after his death. He said he couldn't accept the donation and that the whole collection was worth a lot of money. She had no idea. He asked her for all her details and if he could try to sell them for her. She agreed. Within weeks, everything sold. He called her, and she met him at the store. He told her that he'd sold them to collectors all around Australia who loved her son's work and handed her roughly $12,000. She cried, he cried; she offered him half, he said no. She then told him that she'd donate his half to a suicide charity in both her son's and his name."
"He said it was the best thing he had ever done in his life." —u/quirkyredpanda
2."My coworker found a live hand grenade. The bomb squad was called. Be careful when you donate grandpa's shit, people."
3."When I was five, my mom brought me and my siblings with her to Goodwill on a school clothes trip. I had made up my mind that I needed a wallet, and the only place I could beg with any hope to get one was a secondhand store. Eventually, I brought my carefully scrutinized choice to mom, who was already so overwhelmed by my siblings' finds that she only told me no a few times before relenting. It cost her $2. In the ride home, I remember going through all of the pockets like I was performing a dissection. At some point, I found a slot that was inside of a pocket that was 'stiff,' as if it was never used. I poked at it enough to separate the fabric and found a bill inside, intricately folded into a tiny square. Before I even realized what it was, I had ripped it out and held it out over the middle seat in the van, waving frantically and practically bouncing in my seat. 'Mom! Look! My wallet has money!' It was four $20 bills, totaling $80."
"My mom raised us alone and didn't have a lot of money. She was just trying to get in and get out of the store. On these trips, we had strict rules NOT to ask for a toy or, frankly, anything. Naturally, that lasted long enough for us to walk through the automatic doors. My brother went one way, my sister another, and I headed straight for an enormous basket of wallets.
As I looked through the wallets, I picked up one but didn't like the pockets. I picked up another but wasn't a fan of zippers. I also HATED the sound of Velcro, so that eliminated many options in the basket.
After we finished, we loaded our sacks of clothes (and my precious new wallet) into our van and started for home. I’ll never forget the stunned yell and absolutely magical, gleeful laugh my mom let out when I showed her the money. My siblings and I joined in, and we didn't stop smiling and talking about it the whole way home. That $80 wasn’t much at all, but it was everything for us on that day.
Mom let me keep a $20. I couldn’t even tell you what I spent it on, but I still remember how that wallet smelled." —u/nomadicpulsar
4."A sword used by a Japanese officer in WWII. A suitcase full of adult toys. A coin collection worth nearly $2,000 accidentally left in a cupboard that was donated. A photo album of someone's wedding. My favorite find was a letter sent in the last mail delivery from Hong Kong before the British returned it to China. It was affixed with EVERY stamp available at the time and mint versions of each of these stamps enclosed."
"I tend to sort books at my store, so I have found a few odd things in there: Cash as bookmarks (about $150); A book with carved pages to conceal some jewels and gemstones; First edition books on agriculture from the 1800s; Lots of handwritten recipes; Personal letters." —u/Davosown
5."A great, big, plastic shopping bag full of cooked spaghetti. No sauce. Probably like five kilograms (roughly 11 pounds) or so."
6."I worked for a nonprofit for seniors that also ran a charity shop. People often just dropped off boxes of stuff they found in their parents' attic. One box had a bunch of letters. Some of them were from WWII, when the man was stationed at Camp Carson in Colorado. One of the letters must have been something they were holding on to, as it was a 1914 letter proposing marriage. It was so romantic. He fell in love with her when they went ice skating together and included an advertisement for some houses they could buy. They were really nice houses, selling for about $1,500 at the time."
7."I worked for a charity, and we picked up old clothes, etc. that we then sold in bulk to a thrift chain. When we unloaded the truck, it was common to toss the bags to store employees, and they would catch them before stacking them on the racks. Well, one time, some idiot put a big chef's knife in a bag of clothes. The store employee caught the garbage bag of clothes, wrapped his arms around it as he caught it, and proceeded to stab himself in the arm. After that, the policies were changed, and we had to put the bags at the edge of the truck for the store employees to then take off, because our insurance didn't cover us off the truck, and theirs didn't cover them in it."
8."I found $125 in the front pocket of a kid's coat! It had to be a coat for a kid around 3–4 years old. The next day, I found more money in another jacket!"
9."I used to sweep the parking lot of a Goodwill, and they would toss very interesting stuff into the dumpster. Hundreds of books — like really expensive ones. Leather-bound sets of classical works from the 1920s, early prints of sci-fi novels (I found a nice collectible copy of Dune recently), and family Bibles stacked thick with memories. I've also found food dehydrators, paintings, collectible sports memorabilia, and super valuable vintage tools and fixtures. Most of it is just stuff that nobody bothered checking the value of before chucking out, and it's really sad."
"I found a destroyed collection of old Spalding baseball bats, the oldest being from the '30s. They were left in the dumpster in standing water for days at least.
It's sad to see things like that go, maybe because at one point someone loved them very much, and someone else decided that all the care it took to collect these treasures was a waste." —u/friendlygaywalrus
10."About 10 years ago, I worked at a chain thrift store. One morning, we got a phone call from this gentleman saying, rather calmly, 'I think I accidentally donated my mom.' Naturally, I had no clue what the fuck that meant. Turns out, the guy donated his mom's ashes, so he left his number in case we found it. The whole back room went on a hunt, and it had turned into this competition of who would find his mom first. We found her, phoned him, and he came and picked her up. We thought that was the last of him until we were processing some donations a few months later and found his mom again. We phoned him because we still had his contact information, and his only reply was, 'Goddammit.' He came and got her, and we never heard from him after that."
"She was in a big, heavy, bronze, there's-no-way-that’s-not-an-urn urn. I'm still not convinced that the second time was an accident." —u/whiskeyhalfpint
11."Love letters between two people from the late 1800s, multiple suicide letters, one suicide tape, and many diaries. More specifically, one diary was written by a gay man going to medical school in the '70s in San Francisco. It spans 10 years and has a first-person account of his feelings the day Harvey Milk was assassinated."
"A lot of times, when people die, their family members will drop everything off. We then have to sort through everything and figure out what we can and cannot sell. Personal things like letters and diaries can't be sold, but at the same time, they seem so special it’s hard to throw them away.
When I quit that job, I took a giant box of all this personal memorabilia with me and had a bonfire where I read every single letter/note/diary entry and then burned them. I burned everything except the diary, letters, and suicide tape. I have those all sitting in a drawer in my closet. I still sit down and read them sometimes.
However, the suicide tape was so disturbing that I actually separated the tape from the recorder so that I couldn't easily play it anymore. It was an hour-long recording of a father saying goodbye to his three sons. I wonder how that tape even got donated in the first place. Was it an accident? Did the son it was given to also die, and was the tape then donated by someone who didn't know what it was? Did the father never actually commit suicide and, over the years, forget about it, leaving it to get mixed in with his other stuff that eventually got donated?" —u/kittygocrappy
12."A dead bat, a switchblade, a pocket watch painted with radium, and an 18th-century wolf trap. Oh, and I almost forgot: A late-1800s book on phrenology."
13."I work at a thrift store as a donation handler. The gnarliest thing I had seen was a literal stack of mattresses left overnight during off hours. They were disgusting, crawling with bugs, and riddled in stains of various shades and hues. I noped the fuck out of that and called my manager. They actually brought a forklift out to take them straight to the trash compactor."
"Just the other day, we had a donor drop off a small crate (like a milkcrate kind of thing) chock full of hentai. Just today, I found a small, marble one-hitter pipe at the bottom of the donation bin." —u/Blurple_Berry
14."I was working off some probation at the Salvation Army. Once, when I was going through the boxes, I found $1,000 in the pocket of some plaid pants. I found out that they were dropped off by a girl whose dad had died. I tried to contact her again but to no avail. I got to keep it, and it helped pay my rent for the month."
"I was really struggling at that time, so I was very grateful." —u/satansleeps
15."Dildo. My 72-year-old boss found it and came up to me and some coworkers — having walked through the entire store without concealing it — to ask us what it was because she didn't know how to categorize or price it."
16."Back in the '90s, my mom would buy those blank VHS tapes to record on. Sometimes, the ones from Goodwill already had stuff recorded on them, but we would just record over them. I remember one that had a bunch of The Simpsons episodes. However, some of them just had porn."
"A LOT of porn." —u/booksoverppl
17."A few years ago, when there was an earthquake in Mexico City, many people were donating old clothes and stuff for people who were now homeless. I was helping with the donations, and I ended up finding a pair of pants that were as tall as me. Each leg could fit me inside of it."
"Here are some other things I found: A literal goddamn baby-sized suit; A single glove the size of my head; A shirt made of what seemed to be the same fabric that my couch has (I'm not talking about just the same pattern, it was the literal fabric); A single boot that weighed about two pounds; A pair of red overalls that were around the same size as the pants, although they were not as big." —u/sarcastic_bitch01
18."I once found a hidden WWI photo. I was working in a store that was in a seaside town, and we'd gotten in a crappy picture of different kinds of knots, so I put it out for cheap. A few days later, it fell off the wall. The frame had broken, so I brought it to the back to chuck it out. That's when I found a big military group photo hidden behind."
"I have no idea why it was hidden." —u/Mediocre_Sprinkles
19."I worked at a Value Village a long time ago, and a coworker found cremated ashes. They were in a box that had the funeral home info on it, so our manager contacted them about it."
20."My aunt had found one of the few surviving enigma machines. The owner passed away, and his family dropped it off with a box of newspapers and some memorabilia from the war. My aunt, being a history nut, figured out what it was and got it appraised. It was worth almost £100,000 (roughly $120,280). She looked for the family for five months before being able to return it to them."
"She didn't have a heart to take it under false pretenses." —u/siogin55
21."I worked for a Goodwill program that hired developmentally disabled adults. My job was to assist the clients as they processed donations. We found things like a bowl and bag of weed in a coat pocket, a shirt that said, 'I'm not an alcoholic, I just go to AA to get chicks,' and, worst of all, a garbage bag full of dead rats."
"The shirt sustained a tear and had to be trashed." —u/conkface
22."My coworker found a bag of euros at Goodwill. He bought the bag for about $90, and it turned out to be worth over $600."
23."A vintage Mickey Mouse gas mask from the WWII. We were not far from an antique dealer, and I later saw that mask in the center of the antique shop window."
24."At my job, I handled a lot of used items. Basically, the customer or next of kin would forget what was in their contents, and we would find it through cleaning. I reckon the craziest thing that we found would be an old, WWII-era Japanese rifle and katana. We were unsure of the validity, of course, especially because research says that many fakes have flooded the market. However, we found it tucked away in a hidden alcove in an attic, next to the husband's ashes and old newspapers."
"So who knows?" —u/Amkao-Herios
25."I was working in a charity shop that helped support cancer patient treatments. Most people donated from the goodness of their hearts, but a very small minority would use the shop as a garbage drop-off. (Fuck them, they're scum.) One time, two young dudes rock up with two small bags of clothes and two drawer-type bedroom furniture. The bag of clothes was all good — there was some expensive stuff in it. However, each drawer had a mirror super-glued to the top of the desk. I'm standing there looking at it, like a fool, wondering what the hell it was all about. Then, one day, the Garda (Irish police) came in one looking for the furniture and clothes. Turns out, the two lads were drug dealers, and they just dropped off the evidence. They were using the drawer to cut up coke."
26."A fox fur stole with real fur — still in the shape of the fox but with glass eyes. It nearly gave me a heart attack, lying there, looking at me!"
27."At a veteran thrift store, I found the DD-214 discharge papers of a WWII veteran, along with original family photos, documents, and letters. I was very upset, having recently handled so much paperwork around the death of my grandfather. I knew exactly what I was looking at when I saw the DD-214. I started Googling the man's name and tracked down his adult daughter, who owned a small business with her husband. I found the business' email address and reached out, and she got back to me almost immediately. Turns out, he had remarried after he and her mother divorced, and his new wife took over the man's life. The daughter had seen very little of her father since then. At the end of his life, his wife took charge of all of his possessions and cleared out his house without having told her anything. Understandably, the daughter was very angered and upset by this at the time. I told her she must be the little girl in the baby pictures I'd found."
"I said that I would be glad to send her all these materials and shipped them out to her via FedEx with tracking. She was so deeply moved. She didn't have any baby pictures with her father.
I don't know if I've ever done anything good in my life, but I know I did a good thing that week. Internet research skills and compassion for the win." —u/LauraMcCabeMoon
