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Weekly community thrift haul thread

Dan Dubeau said:
It's been a while since I've been out 2nd hand shopping, and even longer since I really got any deals worth posting.

Habitat Restore for the 1/2 roll of cat6, and copper 3/4-1/2" tee's (bought 10), and value village for the brand new Kuny's tool bag.
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Had a princess auto stop on the way home, and a Market place buy tonight as well. Busy day....
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SCORE!
 
Seeing as how I have to drive into the belly of Toronto for tradeschool everyday, I've been stopping at every pawn shop, and thrift store I can find on my way home this week to make that drive more worth while. Not found a whole lot, but have picked up some nice tools for the work box.
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The 15" adjustable I got tonight. Price tag was $39.99, and I asked if they were flexible. He said give me $30 cash, and I countered with, "seeing as how the price tag is half worn off, how about it's half price and I'll give oyu $20". He laughed said sure, and I parted with a green one. Pretty nice shape williams, jaw tight and not all dinged up. Will replace the import one I currently have. Slowly but surely I will replace all the frequently used import tools in my bags and boxes. The big drill is 5/8" and was $5. Wrenches $1 each.

The restore had these foam gun cleaners on for $5 so I bought 2. It's just pressurized acetone. Handy to have around for cleaning aluminum before welding. Or for it intended purpose of cleaning a foam gun.....
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Will probably focus on kijiji/market place deals next week, as I've hit all the spots between the college and home for now lol.
 
My brother worked at a pawn shop many years ago. Apparently their markup is just what you would expect from a business model that is basically predatory - they pay out pennies and then put prices on things that are as close to new as they think they can get away with. This does imply that in many cases they may accept low ball offers since they are still making money and turning over stock. I very much do like Restore though.
 
Their mark up is not as bad as value village.... I've found most of the gta restores to be not that great for tools and stuff I'm looking for. The Peterborough ones used to be good, and I used to stop weekly at both when I worked there, but then they shut down the south one, and the guy that took over the north one is pricing tools at insane amounts. When I questioned him one day why he had 30 year old junk taiwan tools priced higher than new retail he told me to shop elsewhere if I didn't like it. Will do, I haven't been back. Cobourg is ok, and I have not been to the Lindsay one yet.
The one pawn shop in scarborough had a nice small electric Kiln (looked brand new) for around $500 I contemplated buying, but then remembered I'm a broke student right now, and barely have enough money for parking and gas to and from school everyday for the next 2 months lol. If anybody else is interested it's the Swap shop @ Swap Shop, 2300 Lawrence Ave E, Scarborough, ON M1P 2R2. I cannot remember the model.

I've never really been a pawn shop guy, for the reasons you stated. Mostly the prices are never that great, and it's a pretty good bet that most of those tools are very warm.....I'm not paying 80% of retail for beatup cordless tools that probably grew legs off a jobsite somewhere. I've only been stopping lately to try and find some missing Proto wrenches from my roll, and some other similar stuff.
 
I do the walk through about once a month to see if anything jumps out and always ask what’s your best price and sometimes offering a price saying it’s been here for months or sometimes years you’d have better luck with something else there.
 
I'll see what I can do. Kids baseball is starting up this week (2 weeks earlier than I expected) so my weekdays M-T just got busier. If I get time to pop in and grab it, I'll let you know.
 
I stopped in at the Restore yesterday, slim pickings.
I did find 3 new handles for the drawers I put built into the Colchester lathe stand. Also, an old wooden vise that I haven't figured out yet how to mount, I think it might be missing some parts.
 

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Can you show a picture of the backside? It's a woodworking face vice, so there should either be a couple ears on the backside with holes pointing up to secure to the underside of a workbench, or there should also be a couple holes through the fixed jaw to secure to the face of a workbench. It looks to me like there are two holes that are currently used to hold those wooden jaws on that can be used to mount the fix jaw to the edge of a bench. But without a picture of that back it's tough to say if that's the only option. Don't think I've ever seen one without ears or another means of mounting from underneath, but I certainly have not seen them all. Handy vises to have anyway. One can never have too many different ways to securely hold something. This reminds me, I need to remount mine somewhere.....Been sitting a long time since the dismantling of our old woodworking shop at my Dad's place, and subsequent jamming of all that shit in my barn.
 
Funny story. I had a tool box stolen out of the canopy on the truck. I wasn't so much the cost of the tools as they were super cheap rather the annoyance of having to replace them. So I checked in at the local pawn shop to see if they showed up. No Luck. But I did find a Mac 1/4" torque wrench . It was as much as I had in those tools. chuckle.
 
Downwindtracker2 said:
So I checked in at the local pawn shop to see if they showed up. No Luck.
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I spent some time in a pawn shop a while back. I asked how they handle hot goods.

Apparently, everything has to be reported to the local police so they can cross check against reported stolen within some geographic region. Also, everything has to be stored for a month to allow for a reasonable check. After that, it can be put in display and sold. So it's entirely possible that your tools were there, just not on display yet.
 
I always have my suspicions about the origin stories about many of the tools they sell in pawn shops. As such, I don't frequent them very often. Market place/kijiji provide much better deals directly with people without the greasy feeling of "did this tool have legs at some point?". On Market place it's pretty easy to click on somebodies profile and get a quick impression on whether they're a skeeze bag selling stolen gear or not. I've passed on more than a few of those "deals" because of that. Being a victim of tool theft a few times, I'm not going out of my way to support it, but as with every used purchase, there's no way to really know for sure. I much prefer 2nd hand/thrift stores, as the origin story of those tools is more likely to be family simply donating tools from people no longer living.

This past week I was on more of a hunt to find a replacement 1/2" proto wrench for my roll digging through dollar bins. Pawn shops are pretty much the only place left where one could find something like that. I found a couple grays of various sizes including a 1/2" as a suitable replacement, a few proto 9/16", but still no 1/2" Proto. The search continues....I love tool hunting.....of course I could just buy one new from Proto, but wheres the fun in that.....
 
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