It’s a thrill…
There is a shopping excitement that cannot be met through regular trips to the mall or other big name stores where the latest trends can be found at their regular store prices with maybe a sale rack here or there.
This excitement is only brought out by second-hand shopping at thrift stores and consignment shops.
Second-hand shopping always offers the element of surprise for what you may find at a cost you can’t beat anywhere else. It may take a little extra time and patience, but it will not only save you money, it can introduce you to fashions you could never afford otherwise.
You may find an amazing vintage dress next to this season’s best seller from Ann Taylor, and all at the same $10 price.
Take the white tweed jacket adorned with pearls and black ribbon that Laura bought at Silks and Treasures in Oneonta’s Clinton Plaza the other day. It retailed in the boutique mall store, White HouseBlack Market – the store that only sells fashions in black, white and shades of gray – for $198.
She would never even think about dropping that kind of cash
on a piece of clothing, especially not a jacket that could only wear occasionally do to its color and dressiness, but for $20, she didn’t even blink!
In need of a new pair of jeans, Amanda found a like-new pair of Levi’s at the Happy Hippo in Schuyler Lake for $10 that would have retailed for at least $40 in mainstream stores. The rack was filled with other great name-brand designer jeans like 7s, Luckys and The Gap, all at the same price tag.
With second-hand stores, you never know what you will find, and Otsego County has a multitude of consignment shops and charity thrift stores.
To the north, there’s Audrey’s Old and New, east of Richfield Springs on Route 20, Richfield Consignment on Route 20 in Richfield Springs, as well as the Happy Hippo, located on Route 28 between Richfield Springs and Fly Creek.
In the Cooperstown area, there is the Frugal Fashionista on Main Street next to Bieritz Agency, the Frugal Gugal on Pioneer Street, and the SPCA Better Exchange Thrift Store on Route 28 in Hyde Park.
Oneonta offers the Catskill Area Hospice Thrift Shop & Boutique on Main Street, across from City Hall, Shakedown Street Consignment Shop at 177 Main St. on the second level two doors west of the History Center, Salvation Army Thrift Store on Main Street, in addition to Clinton Plaza’s Silks and Treasures Consignment & Resale Store.
The difference between a consignment shop and a thrift store is one that doesn’t really matter to the shopper; it’s an internal issue.
In a consignment shop, people provide gently used castoffs and get a cut of the sale price. Each store’s policy differs, but most require clothes be laundered, free of smell, stains or tears, and of current styles. If your clothes don’t sell after a set amount of time, some donate them to a charitable organization, others offer you the option to come pick them up.
Consignment stores tend to have a slightly higher price tag because they take the time to organize by size, color and type and they offer clothes that match their policy – clean, no stains, and current styles. You can usually work your way through a rack at the consignment shops a little quicker because of the organization.
The charity thrift stores work off of clothes that are donated to them at no profit to the donor. Some have the same restrictions as the consignment stores on what will be accepted, others will take most everything. Because of this accept-all mentality, some of the thrift stores require a keener eye to identify stains or tears, and may take more time to sift through the racks due to the sheer number of clothes.
With second hand shopping, frequent visits to the stores are valuable because their merchandise is constantly rotating as items are bought or brought in. The Silks and Treasures alone has over 10,000 items out at any time. Certainly one of their 7,000 consigners has the same style as you.
All these stores are within just a 45-minute drive, but if you are venturing out of town call ahead because some of them change their hours seasonally or are closed for the first few months of the year.

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