New City, Used Things

When it comes to thrifting, you will find places that you love and regularly visit, but it is also important and really fun to find new places as well. This weekend, Easter weekend, I am heading to Philadelphia with some friends instead of going home. And I thought, what better way to explore the city than to find new thrift stores I have never been to, full of things I have never seen.  I don't know anything about what places are good from anyone I know, but the internet is pretty handy when it comes to things like this. Before I go on my quest of new thrift stores this weekend, I decided to look up the best places and their descriptions. Some of these places are more consignment, while others are more thrift (I like a balance of both). When I was doing this research, I got the impression that many of the vintage consignment shops are more expensive in general, so I chose a balance of shops that seemed most interesting to me. 

1) Tucker's Dig's
                  This is an antique shop full of vintage jewelry, art, clothing, furniture, and has 5 stars on Yelp. It also has extremely low prices, and everyone raves about the array of items and the friendliness and helpfulness of the employees. 

611 S 4th St, Philadelphia, PA 19147

2) Retrospect
                   This is a similar store, more of a consignment store than thrift. It is vintage based, from magazines to clothes to kitchen supplies. Someone that left a review online even found a Christian Dior trench coat! It has a high rating of 4 stars, and everyone has great things to say about the store!

508 South St, Philadelphia, PA 19147

3) Philly AIDS Thrift
                     This store is more of thrift store full of all kinds of things, not just vintage. I found out that they have separate rooms for different objects, like a Christmas room, or the "Dollar Land" room where everything is a dollar. It is big and full of things to dig through, and a great aspect is that the profits go to local organizations involved in the fight against HIV and AIDS. 

710 S 5th St, Philadelphia, PA 19147

4) Repo Records
                     This is a different kind of shop, focused on music, including records, CDs, DVDs, and other forms of music. They also have band shirts, ranging in how old they are and the prices, but in general the music selection is very cheap. 

538 South St, Philadelphia, PA 19147

These are just a few of the ones that really stood out to me as places to check out, but this is definitely not a full list! And while these places seem to be successful and full of treasures online, it could be completely different for me if I go. Remember, when going about thrifting, sometimes you have to just try it out, and it might not work out immediately and it might not work out at all, but it is fun anyway. I haven't been to Philadelphia before, and I haven't been to a new string of thrift stores in a long long time, so this should be fun! 

Reading Up On Saving

If any of you are readers, then you know the struggle of how to get ahold of books. For me, I hate buying them because they are so expensive, but if I go to the library and find a great book, it's a bummer to give it back in case I want to read it again, which I usually do. The solution? Thrifting of course! Finding books at insane prices, as low as $1, is a great way to stock up. When shopping for books at thrift stores or consignment shops, there are a couple things to keep in mind. It is not a library and therefore is not in any sort of order besides genre (hopefully). This makes it a bit difficult to find books, especially if you are looking for something in particular, it's like looking for a needle in  a haystack. Another thing to keep in mind is that there is a large array of books, meaning that you can get exactly what you want or nothing at all. You could come across the whole Twilight collection, but won't be able to find one Harry Potter book. It is the luck of the draw, depending on the store, day, time, and other factors.

                                                                       source

From all my past experience, I have found that thrift stores have a better book collection compared to consignment stores; they are bigger and generally a little more organized, like a department store. The first step when book shopping is to find the store you want to scavenge; for me, I find Salvation Army and definitely Savers to be by far the best. Savers, a huge, organized, thrift store that has a warehouse department store feel to it, has rows of bookshelves, with a range of genres. Savers is also huge on sales, and books is no exception. Normally when I am there, their prices are usually something like "buy 4 books, get one free" and they base their price on the previous price; if the cover price was up to $8 before, then the price now is around $1 or $2. Books are more expensive than one might think, so this is a great way to save!

I am a big reader, and I always will be. Summer is my time to read read read; at the beach, at night, by the pool, in the morning, whenever. I have so much free time and to me reading outside by the ocean or under the sun is the greatest feeling. My book collection is extensive, but will continue to grow as I read about 6 books a summer and need new material often. There are many that I read and loved and many I haven't been able to touch at all since I bought them; Under the Tuscan Sun, Life of Pi, Gift from the Sea, False Mermaid, A Year by the Sea, The Lovely Bones, Pride and Prejudice and many more are just some I have purchased.

My favorite book, White Oleander, is one of these books I stumbled upon in a thrift store, but this time I was actually looking for it. I had seen the movie at the request of my mother, and she has great taste in books and movies, being a big reader herself. She told me that it was a book first, but the movie was fantastic as well, with Michelle Pfieffer and Renee Zellweger. After watching the movie, I was hooked, and I made it a goal to keep my eyes peeled for a copy of the book, and I found it the very next time I went to Savers strange enough. It was quite crazy actually, and I loved the book even more than the movie.

Again, this is a super cheap and resourceful way to get books, both new and old. If you are like me then going to the book section is something to look forward to, because I know I will never leave empty handed because of the prices and the array of books.