Tips for Shopping Secondhand: Part 2

We’re pulling back the curtain on our secondhand buying practices in this week’s blog series: Tips for Shopping Secondhand. On Monday, we shared our most important tip: shop frequently.

We’re back today with another tip that involves knowing an item’s worth.

The second tip we’re offering is to download the Google app and utilize the Google Image feature.

If you haven’t heard of Google Image, it’s a feature of Google that allows a search of the Internet based on an image rather than words. It’s incredibly helpful to establish not just what an item is but its traditional cost.

Back when I was a child and my mom was reselling vintage items on eBay (before it was a super popular thing to do), I used to dread the phone calls from the thrift store that would involve her asking me to look up an item’s worth.

As a vintage reseller myself, I’m thankful now for the training. But Google Image is making it even easier to determine if an item that I think has age and value actually does.

But if you’re not a vintage reseller, why would utilizing Google Image be helpful?

Simply, to know if you’re getting a bargain or overpaying for a used item.

We don’t begrudge a thrift store’s attempts at making money. Often, that money is going to fund the needs of a community. However, as it’s become more popular for vintage resellers to frequent thrift stores, some now employ people whose sole job is to look up an item’s worth and price accordingly. And sometimes, those prices can be unreasonable.

Google Image gives you the opportunity to look up the item to determine a few things: 1. Is the price reasonable? 2. Can I get this somewhere else for cheaper?

Up until last week, I based a lot of thrift store purchases on pure intuition because it just so happens that my cell service at my favorite thrift stores is pretty awful. However, with Google Image on my phone, I can at least take a picture of an item and step outside the store to utilize the photo in the app to get information much faster. It also would’ve come in handy much sooner when I was stumped about an item.

If you download and utilize Google Image on your next thrift store trip, I want to hear about it in the comments!