[Dove]

I used to work at a thrift store. The amount of value we could extract from the average box of stuff dropped off to donate . . . was nowhere near $10. In fact, a lot of it couldn't be sold at all -- it just got thrown away.

Broken toys, clothes with holes, dirty shoes, smoke-damaged, water-damaged, and just plain damaged stuff. Ugly nick-nacks, beat up plastic cups, dated books no one wants to read. We got so many tins and baskets! Everyone gets them full of cookies or gifts, no one wants to throw them away, and no one actually has a use for them.

My co-worker and I did the master sorting -- sending stuff to different departments or to the trash. I saw it all. Her summary? "People send us their garbage!"

And that's the stuff that people could be bothered to drive to the store, look a person in the eye, and drop off without too much embarrassment. This was stuff they genuinely thought was valuable.

A box you can fill with crap from your garage?

Well.

Paying $1 for that sight unseen is probably too much. $10 plus postage is . . . endearingly naive.

[akristofcak]

This is really helpful perspective, thank you! (the author)

[thaumaturgy]

I still think your idea has merit. Thrift stores tend to attract a very specific market, and that doesn't need to be your market. Thrift stores operate by accepting "junk" from people and then trying to fob it off on to other people.

As a counter-anecdote, there is a place in my area that buys used tools & equipment from people and then sells them back. They're one of my favorite places -- I'd much rather buy a used Milwaukee than a brand new cheapie -- and they seem to do pretty good business. Lots of stuff coming and going all the time.

You might bake in some kind of tracking & rating system if you're concerned about resale value. If a particular user sends in too many boxes of stuff you can't get $15+ for, reduce their payment accordingly.

[pavel_lishin]

> Thrift stores tend to attract a very specific market, and that doesn't need to be your market.

This is part of the reason I started off my comment by imagining what an idealized HN reader would donate. That's the kind of person you want to attract. But I genuinely wonder if there are enough of those people - the fact that you're paying them a pittance turns a gift of generosity (e.g., donating to a cancer charity) into a job.

[Dove]

Ah, well, since I have your attention, I'll give you the other side of the coin. The key to getting good stuff from people is how you make them feel about giving it to you.

Most people think thrift stores sell the stuff people drop off there. That's far from true. They get their product from a lot of places -- retail seconds, charities, sometimes even new.

Direct donations are the worst. It's still positive expected value after you collect, sort, and label it all, but sometimes only just barely. Ever notice thrift shop donation centers sometimes have terrible hours? They don't want the stuff that bad!

In direct donation, people give you things they think you're going to sell. They think they're doing you a favor, they think everything has to have some value and anyway, you guys are the experts and at worst you'll just throw it away, right? You get lots of garbage.

One of the things I think people don't understand is the "where it came from" factor. My tennis shoes have some value to me, even though they're pretty beat up. I know where they've been. They've always been mine. I'd cheerfully spend $40 to get them back if they'd disappeared tomorrow.

But to a stranger they're stinky, dirty, beat up, and they don't know where they've been. Zero value. Negative value, even.

Anyway, when people are assessing their own stuff for resale value, they do a pretty terrible job, and it's my private theory that the above is responsible.

Anyway.

The boxes we got with the highest value were from charities. Those signs that say, "Donate your quality used goods to the center for (cancer|mental retardation|war veterans)" . . . those goods eventually end up being sold to thrift stores, and the typical quality is amazing compared to what people drop off. Five times better. Ten times better. More. Depends on the source.

Psychology is weird, and in the thrift business, it can be the difference between a (very) positive and (very) negative profit margin. Just what people choose to give you. I certainly can't begin to explain it, and would never have expected that the difference in the quality of donations to different causes would be so wide.

Just be careful, is all. In my (limited, unscientific, yet still statistically significant) experience as a junk sorter, stuff coming from the "we'll take your junk and resell it" message performs the worst. The very worst. "For the children" seemed to be about the best.

I have absolutely no idea how "purify your life" will do. Could be awesome. Could be terrible. I'm not optimistic, but who knows. People are weird.

If it does poorly, though, seriously considering donating the $10 to a (specific!) charity. That should help a lot.

[akristofcak]

Thank you! Again, very helpful. Clearly, the message/concept will need to be carefully crafted to encourage good behavior.

One solution that occurred to me: sharing X% of proceeds back with the donor. The idea being that this would encourage people to send more objectively valuable stuff (though as you point out people are terrible at estimating value).

I like really like the idea of donating to specific causes. Did the thrift shop pay the charities a portion of the proceeds in exchange for the boxes?

[Dove]

Did the thrift shop pay the charities a portion of the proceeds in exchange for the boxes?

Sort of. It would have been impossible to track that, but corporate did have some idea what the average box (from a particular source) was worth, and paid them that amount. Or maybe the charity set the price. I don't know. I just know it was different for different sources, and well justified.

[akristofcak]

Or, X% to the donor, Y% to a charity, Z% to cover expenses

[mst]

This does, however, make me wonder if there's a way to (ab)use the charitable deductions system to make it a zero cost thing. Spun right, I can see a lot of people (myself included) find donating it for free to be a more satisfying idea than paying to throw it away, provided it's a minimally irritating process (remember that in both cases you're competing against "put off throwing it out for another month/year").

As a good example, some friends of mine who work in a networking team will turn up with a land rover and collect whatever pile of old computer equipment you have; they aggregate it and sell it to scrap merchants and the proceeds go towards drinks at their office christmas party. Their management have concluded the fuel costs are less than the recovered beer costs, and I know I can reliably get rid of old tech I don't need and even if it doesn't go to a charity as such it's going to buy beer for people I know and like.

The point here is that making it almost entirely free of effort on my part, plus at least the illusion that the money raised is going for something I consider to be of at least marginally more than zero value, makes it a proposition I'm quite happy to work with.

Or: Find a way to make people feel at least a little good about making as little effort as possible; the marginal value of a slight good feeling to me is far more than $10 especially if the $10 requires more effort to get.

[artax77]

i find this fascinating. tell us more about the stuff you got at the thrift store!

liketwice.com has a program like the OP is suggesting, but they have a short list of requirements for what they accept. they review the stuff and make you an offer that you can accept or reject. i imagine if they get through two or three holey shirts or smelly shoes they just send you a $1 offer (or $0) and move on.

[danielweber]

I have things that are slightly broken that are worth money if someone is willing to spend some time. I do not have that time. Does anyone?

[wiml]

A few people do... My neighborhood has a pretty good culture of leaving free stuff on the curb for a day or so. There's enough for traffic that stuff gets picked up pretty quickly if anyone actually wants it. I'm always surprised by which things go immediately and which things go into the trash after a day or so. But I feel much less wasteful throwing something out if the curb has already demonstrated its complete valuelessness.

[precisioncoder]

I love this system. Halifax, NS had an amazing culture of that when I was in my late teens early twenties I furnished all my apartments with street finds/repairs. Sadly the city is going through gentrification and they're starting to crack down on this.

[pavel_lishin]

Look into freecycling.