oh Goodwill, what a magical place you are. there's nothing like a Goodwill, you've got the endless sea of clothing in the center, the corner reserved for heaps of cheap, plastic children's toys, the CD bin where all the cases are either empty or replaced with something other than what's on the cover, the shelf of religious cassette tapes, and the electronics section full of shitty keyboards and cables for things you didn't know existed. Wikipedia may call it a thrift store, but i like to think of it more as a refined dump. unlike normal thrift stores, Goodwill gets their stock through donations. that's putting it nicely though, it's pretty much where everything people don't want anymore goes to rot. stock always pretty hit or miss, sometimes it's all just total junk you couldn't pay me to take, and other times you find a 24-inch CRT in working condition for 5 bucks.

yes, that's a true story, and yes, it's my most prized possession to this very day. honestly, best deal i've ever gotten at Goodwill, hands down. but that's an outlier, usually Goodwill is a super mixed bag. case in point, the CD section. this is ually the part of the store i'm most drawn to. as the proud owner of a 2001 Subaru Outback, my car only has two methods of playing music: a CD player and a tape player. as such, i've kind of been forced into collecting CDs if i want to listen to any music in the car, and YES, i KNOW, i can just get a tape adapter. in fact, i've already got one. but my phone doesn't have a headphone jack, and i refuse to buy a second adapter just for that. so CDs it is! pretty much every time i go to a thrift store, or any store for that matter, i always look to see what their CD collection is like. Goodwill is a weird case though, since people aren't trying to sell the CDs that end up here, they're trying to get rid of them, so most of the CDs are whatever that person didn't want anymore. even so, sometimes you can find some alright stuff. if you've taken a look at the Music tab on this site, you'll know my taste in music is pretty varied, so i'm not super picky in terms of what i consider "alright." some albums i've picked up from Goodwill include Sugar Ray's Floored, Aqua's Aquarium, Beastie Boys' Licensed To Ill, Nada Surf's High/Low, and Suzanne Vega's 99.9F. actually, scratch that last one. yeah, when i got to the car and opened the case to 99.9F, it was empty. that's the issue with Goodwill's media section, because nothing's stopping people from just... opening the cases and nabbing the CDs. hell, nothing's stopping people from donating empty cases in the first place. that also applies to videogames, because yes, every so often you find the fabeled videogame at Goodwill.

unlike the music CDs, the kind of games that end up at Goodwill are generally total junk. you know the type, old EA Sports games, Wii and Kinect shovelware, old PC games that don't work on modern machines... to be fair, i have bought my fair share of old PC games from Goodwill. i found complete-in-box copies of both MDK and The Sims Deluxe Edition and scooped those up for a cool 2.52 each, but that was mainly for collection purposes. i still haven't figured out a way to get these working on my computer, unfortunately. i know i could probably set up a virtual machine, but ever since VMWare got bought out i just don't even wanna bother. the only other Goodwill game i got was Namco Museum 1 for PS2 all the way back in 2018, and that was only because i had just gotten my PS2 and wanted anything to play on it.

i made a big point about Goodwill in the opening paragraph having a lot of clothes for sale, and i think that's my biggest problem with it. i think thrifting for clothes is cool and extremely valid, don't get me wrong, but it's also not what i'm interested in looking at 90% of the time i'm at a thrift store. i'm usually looking for videogames or CDs or other stupid tech like that. even so, i occasionally do find some cool stuff in terms of clothes. one of my favorite goodwill finds ever is a skull print button up short sleeve shirt, it's kind of tacky but also kinda cool, i love it to death. Goodwill is also a good hotspot for jorts, if you're a jorts appreciator such as myself. otherwise, that huge sea of clothing racks is basically worthless to me.

where Goodwill really shines, however, is the tech section. if you're a colossal nerd like me, Goodwill is a haven of cheap, random tech. there is the previously mentioned 5 dollar CRT, but my roommate (who frequents Goodwills with me) found a set of powerline network adapters (pretty much ethernet that travels through your wall sockets) that usually go for around a hundred dollars, and she only had to pay 10! another great find was an 8TB external Seagate hard drive for only 10 bucks or so. i've also bought male-to-male AV cables there for less than a dollar, random power cables i've needed, HDMI cords, the works. hell, if you ever need a keyboard, Goodwill's always got you covered. the tech section is where it's at.

in conclusion, is Goodwill a good place for thrifting? if you ask me, it really depends on what you're looking for. clothes? go for it, the world is your oyster. music? make sure you double check the cases to make sure they're not empty, but sometimes you'll find something. videogames? good fuckin' luck pal. even with that said, it's still always kind of exciting to visit a new goodwill and see what random junk you can find. it's like being able to look through a garbage dump, most of it isn't gonna be anything special, but every so often you find that cool diamond in the rough.