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Shoppers look for last-minute deals at thrift stores
J.R. Munoz-McNally photo
Kenya Bowman views items on a shelf Monday as she searches for a special gift at Yokefellow Ministries.
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Published: December 23, 2008
Kenya Bowman was still in search of that last special Christmas gift or two.
Without a large excess of funds, she was browsing the shelves of Yokefellow Thrift Shop to find them.
"My friend, Chastity Adams, she really likes stuff like this," Bowman said holding up a pair of ceramic candlesticks. "But I'm just not quite sure if this is exactly it."
Bowman realizes also that there is not much time on the clock to find that perfect something.
"I know it's getting near the end, but I'm still looking," she said.
And she is not alone in looking in places that might have been passed by in Christmases past. It's no secret that, for a lot of people, times are tough.
"Our revenues are up about 75 percent over this time last year," said Earnest Runge, president of Yokefellow Ministries, a coalition of some 35 churches organized to help those in need.
"And it is not just what you would call 'poor people' who are coming here to shop," Runge said. "We get people from all walks of life and across the board."
Runge said the store has items that, literally, cannot be found anywhere else. He pulls one of a set of two covered China bowls off a shelf and offers some brief notes about the item's provenance.
"These bowls are from Poland and were made sometime between 1880 and 1890," Runge said, reading from a computer printout. "These are pretty rare and valuable bowls."
He priced the bowls at $70 for the pair, which, he said, was half the amount a set similar to them sold for on eBay.
"A lot of what we get comes from estates sales," Runge said. "And a lot of times we end up with some really nice stuff."
And the word about that stuff is out, according to Neil Furr, Yokefellow's executive director.
"I think some people are initially maybe reluctant to shop here, maybe because of the location," he said of the South Statesville site. "But it just takes one time to come in and they're hooked."
And, Furr said, Christmas and the financial downturn has brought in some new faces.
"I would guess that a lot of people have been Christmas shopping here this year," he said. "Some of them won't come out and tell you that it was for Christmas but it probably has been."
Donita Elliot is the manager of the Statesville Goodwill Store.
She said the store has had a lot of new customers during the Christmas shopping season.
"We have our regulars," she said. ""But there have been a lot of different people in recently. And I think this week it's going to get even busier."
Wanda Kimbro was wandering the aisles at Goodwill on Monday. She said she was mostly done with her Christmas shopping.
"But," she added, ""if I see something that reminds me of someone, I'll get it."
The Habitat for Humanity's Restore is a place to buy larger ticket items — such as yard ornaments and decorations — and Store Director Michael Zuber said a lot of the Christmas rush there was done in advance of the holiday season.
"We may actually be a little slower now that all that is done," he said. "But sales overall this year have been just as good and probably better than last year and I was a little surprised by that."
While Zuber says there may not be a lot of gift ideas at Restore, there are some.
As an example he points out a king-sized cherry wood bed — headboard, footboard and sideboards — and says it likely would retail for something in the $2,000 range.
"We're selling it for $300," he said. ""And I'll bet you that will be gone tomorrow (Tuesday)."
And it will have to be if someone wants to put a Christmas bow on it.
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