Goodwill Bins and Games

Ever heard of the Goodwill Bins (also known as the Goodwill Outlet)? It is a magical place where you as a shopper go to save poor household items, toys, and clothes from the dumpster. I feel like I’m in toy story 5, “burn Woody burn!”. The toys are literally (not really) screaming out to you to save them. This is the last stop before oblivion for all of them.

Goodwill outlet

Ok, let me stop being hysterical and start from the beginning.

Goodwill Outlets are final stop for all ‘sent back’ product from the Goodwill stores. Stuff that didn’t sell as well as items donated directly to the outlet. The items are dumped into large shallow bins, rolled out to the sales floor for a few hours, then what didn’t sell is put into a crusher and dumped.

You buy the stuff by the pound. Currently it is $1.59 a lb. If you have the time to do some digging (bring some gloves, it can be dirty) you can find some little treasures.

In this post I am showing just the games I have rescued (uh, I mean found) from the bins. My wife and I go with an eye to resell (which is what a population of customers are there to do) and while she looks for clothes I go through the household stuff. I have a pretty good eye for good stuff and it’s fun to dig and dig. Finding games is a hit or miss thing. There is always games but most of the time they are dumped out and impossible to gather all the pieces back together. Other times I luck out and find a complete and even unused game (in the case of Whoowasit? and Stacking Chair Game). The only dud I got was the Connect 4, it is missing about 8 pieces but that is no biggie. The great thing about the bins is that you can pick and choose what you take so if I run across another connect 4 game I can grab a handful of pieces needed and not the whole thing. The Whoowasit? and Magic Labyrinth are expensive games in the real world so what a coup that was!

I wholeheartedly suggest you check out the bins at least once. It takes some getting used to but being able to pick and choose bit and pieces is pretty cool and you will always find something interesting.

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