These Thrift Store Workers List The Weirdest Things That Were Ever Donated

Weird how many people thought these items were suitable to on-sell...

Rachel

• Published in Funny
• June 15, 2020

If you have ever been to a thrift or second-hand store, I am sure you will have seen a wide variety of items. There are some absolute gems that can be found, and at a fraction of the price of new items. But, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, thrift stores definitely range in quality. These workers have certainly seen it all. There are some things that should not be purchased secondhand, but guess what? People have donated them anyway!

This thread on Reddit, “Goodwill/thrift shop workers, what are some of the strangest things you've found in the donations?” reveals that some people will donate literally anything…

Oh my gosh

l3esitos

"I was a receiving and loading lead at a thrift store for a few years. We had this guy that cleaned out storage units for a living and then he’d dump whatever he couldn’t flip with us for a tax slip.

He pulls up and we’re going through it all. Pretty nice stuff, looked like it was an estate sale. We get it all unloaded and then we start snooping through to see what needs to get brought to where and we find this green glass vase filled with sand.

I started pouring the sand out into the trash so we could figure if the vase was worth using

“That’s not sand”

Somehow we ended up with an unmarked, full urn."

Score, tbh!

ashbertollini:

"A grinder with weed still in it, and somehow a suitcase full of dildos made it onto the floor and was brought to our attention by an elderly lady who was wanting to purchase the suitcase but didnt want "the extra stuff inside".

I still think a customer had to have somehow snuck a bag of dildos in and dumped them there since anything going to the floor is opened and sprayed with disinfectant, plus it was heavy so it definitely wouldve been opened if it arrived that way. Either way it made for an interesting day at work.

Edit: I forgot to add money! We were allowed to keep any money we found, usually it was the occasional few bucks in a purse someone forgot. Other times it could be big bills or one lady locked out and found a stash of around $2000 in two dollar bills in a trinket box."

Aussie here, kangaroo scrotum mechanise makes for popular souvenirs!

2nm_punisher:

"I worked in donations. In the same day we got a pickled baby tiger shark and a coin purse made from a kangaroo scrotum.

Edit: for everyone wondering how I knew, it still had the original tag on it. Me and my co-workers were guessing it was an unwanted gift someone felt bad about throwing away.

It was not the same person that donated the shark.

Who knew my most upvoted comment would be about kangaroo balls?"

Strange business...

franz23:

"Ah something I can contribute to. In college I was one of the people that directly sorted donations.

I've seen it all, vibrators, boxes of dildos, a nunchuk collection to name a few. On more than one occasion have we found large amounts of money stashed away in hollowed out books, usually $1000+ in new bills.

The one story that sticks out the most was this middle aged man who consistently came on Saturday evenings to donate used underwear. Bags and bags of men's used underwear, for almost 3 months straight, then suddenly he just stopped."

NO

McNifficence:

"When I was about sixteen I worked at goodwill for about 6 months. There was this old homeless man who used to try and sneak inside to sleep and stuff like that. Everyday he'd get kicked out pretty quick by one of my female coworkers. After about a month of working there with her, the homeless man came up to the counter she was working at, gave her a target bag filled with rocks, and left. We open the bag and find a doll underneath about a layer of rocks. It was so friggin creepy. The doll looked exactly like her. We flipped it over and the back had her FULL NAME sewn into it. She quit about a couple days later because she was worried about that homeless man coming back to the store."

oH.

sadwaves:

"Not something I've found particularly but something very strange. Every month and a half or so, a man would come by right before we closed and would donate a single blank cd. Every single time. My coworkers and I would always put it in and see if anything was on it. There never was."

kinetic-passion:

"Blank because he erased the evidence off of it and used your shop to get rid of the disks so the data couldn't be recovered and he couldn't be found with the erased discs in his trash."

Weird stuff

Brother-son:

"Someone donated an entire trash bag full of dirty diapers.

Sex toys. Lots of sex toys. Some older, and more naive, workers actually priced them and put them in the sales floor.

An old electronic chessboard that was somehow worth $2000+

Some rich old lady came in and donated a ziplock bag full of gold and platinum jewelry - it was real.

Huge beanie baby collections. Guess someone finally figured out after 20 years that they weren’t a solid investment. It’s something you hear about but I never really saw before.

Maybe not the strangest but you actually do find some cool old shit people think is worthless. Cool job for a while."

That's fashion, honey

optimists_unite:

"I did find a shirt with a huge picture of a dead fly on it."

Bargain..

JimmyL2014:

"I was sorting out some donated items and come across an unusual set of tools. Through some research, we discovered that it was a full transorbital lobotomy tool set. It got donated to a local university for display. Apparently, a vintage set in good condition can sell for around $1,000."

NO

justenufcrazy:

"A classmate of mine found a human skull that was donated. It still had reminents of human on it. They reported it to the police and turns out it was part of an active murder investigation 1 state over."

That's amazing

MWil2000:

"Finally a question I can answer, I once found a signed first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone, strange in why would anyone give it away!? Managed to buy it for 50p and it’s honestly my prized possession today"

This post has taught me to always check the pockets of my clothes for money but also for reptiles.

GeniusToker:

"Finally my time has come. So many weird donations that I won't even get into because y'all won't believe me but the strangest time was when a young man donated a bag of clothes and then a small gecko hops out. We were honestly all lost at what to do about the little guy until the donor swings back about 1hr later looking kinda frantic asking if we had seen his lizard. We kindly showed him where it took up residence under the porch used for smoking and we never saw either of them again.

Another time a woman dropped off a wedding dress and an accordion with no explanation but she seemed rather upset.

What a weird job."

This escalated

bears-n-beets-:

"My time to shine! I'm a manager at a large chain thrift store and this story is from when I was a pricer, so I priced the clothing before it went to the sales floor. It's pretty normal to find a small amount of cash in a pocket every so often, but one day I was pricing a blazer and I checked inside the inner pockets, as you do, and found two envelopes with Chinese characters on them with $1000 cash in each.

Inside the same blazer we found a rubber banded stack of like 25 credit cards/rewards cards and an expensive-looking watch. We tried to contact the guy but his phone was disconnected. I think he probably died and some family member just donated all his stuff without checking it. Anyway, I only got to keep $300 of it but hey, that's $300 richer than I was before.

A couple other memorable ones my coworkers have found in the past:

• A thick bag of cocaine
• Loaded weapons
• A box of live kittens"

Rachel