Hello there, I doff a cap with a fine ahoy at you for joining me here again.
Today’s post is a quickie about my earlier charity shop rummage (a couple of the pics of the spoils below). Charity shops are places I’ve been shopping in for oh, about 20 years now, since I was about 14. Back then it was kind of a necessity, I was poor and they were cheap, of course it also helped that the crowd I hung out with were goth/beatnick/grunge types and we took great pleasure in not conforming (apart from to and within our own perimeters…ahem, yeah, rock hard…but enough of that!).
Over the years I’ve amassed quite a collection of bric a brac, some that turns out to be worth a bob or two, some financially worthless but dear to my heart all the same. I’ve always loved the thrill of finding something pretty or funky or kitsch, or all of the aforementioned, in amongst a load of tat. It’s a hedonistic buzz!
And now I’m not alone.
Vintage fashion stalks the red carpets, stares waxily out from within the pages of a glossy; retro has become a byword for anything so hip it can out shake Elvis.
Charity shop chic is so today, it’s virtually tomorrow. But at the same time there is a cynical edge to it that I find as tasteless as the tat I don’t buy. I’m talking about the ebay types, and you know who you are. The types that will buy something in a charity shop and then sell it the next day with a 300% mark up. Is that fair? There is a reason these shops are called CHARITY shops. I was actually having a rummage once when I overheard a pariah of a man attempt to haggle a £4 price tag down to £2…presumably to make sure the p+p cost was really ‘free’ when he sent it to it’s new owner…the owner that will have paid thrice the price…unfortunately leapfrogging the donation portion of the transaction.
Personally I have never sold something I’ve bought period, let alone for a profit and if I ever did, I would be sure to go back to the shop I got it from and make a donation. I don’t buy things for that reason, I do it because I like the things I own…and I’m savvy enough to not have paid over the odds…and I made a donation.
Maybe I’m being smug or high minded, but it just seems a fairer way to go about owning that illustrious retro cool that so many of us hanker for these days, below are a couple of bits I picked up today with another of my favourites, I urge you to have a scamp around charidee shops yourselves, go try it and see 
A cute 1950's pin/ash tray by Hornsea Pottery bought today for £2.50 and an extra £1 in the donation tin.
3 neck scarves fit to grace the necks of any Aggy wannabe...or just to look nice in, bought today for 30p each and an extra £1 in the donation tin. Incidentally, the hanging basket chair was a junk shop find that cost me all of £40.
A gorgeous 1950's domino design trio by T G Green. I have another like it and they are one of the cutest finds of the last couple of years The two sets together were bought for £3.50 and, as I knew that these were worth more, I topped the price up to £7 with a matched donation.
