They've started to think they are somehow cool because they are situated in the West End and this means writing the word 'retro' on absolutely fucking everything and hiking up the prices to ridiculous levels. I'm not saying that it’s all of them of course, some of them have kept to the good old charity shop tradition of sell-cheap-and-sell-fast which, considering that they get the stuff for fuck all and have very limited overheads, would seem like the speediest way to make cash for the charity in question. It’s a damn site better than writing 'retro' on a 10-year-old hardback book and sitting it on your shelf priced up at a fiver. The book is no longer an item of stock once you do that; it’s now a dust collecting ornament that will stay on that shelf until the very end of time...
Rather than giving each shop a full post I’m cutting my charity shop reviews down to one paragraph per shop and doing a street/area at a time. I’m absolutely positive that I can get all my pent-up and misplaced rage out in one paragraph. If I can't I’m going to smash up the next retro thing I see which, according to the Salvation Army at the bottom of Dumbarton Road, covers everything that’s more than 10 years old, or just looks shitty.
SALVATION ARMY (LARGE)
If like me, you love a good book then this shop is, in a word, AWESOME. A huge selection of books rotated daily and all at knockdown prices (59p-79p), masses of vintage clothes, furniture and other tacky goods too numerous to mention. The majority are most probably from a dead person's house but I don't care, this is by far the daddy of all Dumbarton Road charity shops!
The staff are pretty pleasant too but for fuck sake don't go digging in boxes before the books are piled onto the table or they shout at you... Seriously.
BARNARDOS
Pretty much 'blaahhh' really. Neither good nor bad, neither cheap nor expensive, so mundane it kind of slips under the radar. She-devil quite likes it for ladies clothes but unfortunately my dress wearing days are long gone so I kind of miss this one out on my travels. Not bad for teddy bears and glassware for some strange reason.
SENSE IN SCOTLAND
Tacky, cheap and pretty damn good if you ask me. I got a bag of vintage Star Wars toys in here for 4 bucks and got rank rotten drunk off the profit for about 2 weeks! So definitely good for a look if old toys, cheap books or clothing is what you’re after. Would give it a miss for antiques though as anything made of china that looks 'old' gets the Oxfam treatment and shoots up in price whether its valuable or not.
HOSPICE SHOP
Hardly ever opens on time and when it does it tends to have the same stuff in stock week in week out. My last purchase was a DVD of The Gate about a year ago that cost me a mere 50p so the price is right, just a shame the stock very rarely is!
Would say it’s worth a look if you’re passing by as it usually has a good range of vintage furniture, which is about the only stock that changes regularly.
MARIE CURIE CANCER CARE
Pretty much like Barnardo’s actually, with little to either rankle or make me happy... Standard all round, though often smells faintly of pee.
SHELTER
None too shabby. Low prices and a decent stock turnover, especially good for clothes rather than books or music but some of the clothes can be a tad overpriced and some are also damaged... Let the buyer beware!
SALVATION ARMY (SMALL)
Hhhhhmmmmm, strange one this. It's a Salvation Army shop, the same as the one at the opposite end of the road, and yet it’s three times as expensive and noticeably shitter. I'm not even sure 'shitter' is a real word, and if it is then I’m probably not using it right, but this is my blog and I’ll do what I want. So there.
BRITISH RED CROSS
Don't even get me started on these fuckers! The staff are very nice and the shop is well-stocked but get ready to shit yourself when you take a gander at the prices. Second hand trainers and denims are all good makes but £35 for a pair of USED Diesel denims and £20 for a well-worn pair of adidas superstar trainers is far too much. These crazy bastards even have standard hardback books priced up at 6-10 bucks!!
The con is that the books are discounted by 50% when you get to the counter so you think you’re getting a bargain but when they start off so high anyway it’s just ridiculous. Even when discounted its still, on average, 5-8 times more expensive for books than any other shop on Dumbarton Road. Big bunch of arse.
Either get a reality check and adjust your prices or stop smoking crack when you've got the pricing gun out or you'll risk losing all of your customers for good and thus make less cash for your charity than ever before. I for one won’t be back until they do something.
CANCER RESEARCH UK
Another charity shop that does my tits right in. Overpriced books, overpriced vinyls/cd's and overpriced anything that looks even remotely fucking old, whether its reproduction or not. All these guys do with old stuff (and for 'old' I mean literally anything more than ten years old) is write the word 'retro' on the label and double the price. Heads up idiots, old does not necessarily constitute retro!!! My granny is fucking ancient but she's as far from being retro as they come!
Mass produced wooden chess sets are not retro, comics more than five years old are not retro, fucking Revell model cars are not retro! In fact, here’s the link for retro, look it up for fucksake and adjust prices accordingly...
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