Support your local Goodwill

[Andy Collins]

Goodwill has lots of great cameras! Ebay has become the predominant place to

find classic or vintage cameras, and sometimes the prices reflect that. Make no

mistake though, it's probably the best place to shop for vintage cameras; I

spend way too much time browsing there as it is. At Goodwill however, many times

they don't seem to realize what it is they're putting on the shelves and their

prices reflect that fact as well. In the last few weeks I've found a Minolta

Hi-Matic AF ($3.99!), my beloved Vivitar 35ES (priced at $1.99 originally, but

that was a mistake; it was $19.99-still a ridiculously good bargain), and a

Pentax PC35AF with the PC35 winder attached (also $3.99). Interestingly they had

a MX-something-or-other, one of those 'premium' cameras you get free with your

magazine subscription priced at $10.99, probably because they sometimes look

like more than what they are. I'm sure this will change before too long; they'll

catch on. Goodwill already has an auction site much like the big auction site,

and they have a zillion cameras to bid on. All this to say, take a look at your

local Goodwill; you may find a real treasure there.

[jdrose]

No doubt. It is a win-win situation. Makes me wish I lived in a big city sometimes.

[glenn_mabbutt]

I found a decent Canonet 28 at my local Goodwill a few weeks ago. It looks good except for slightly corroded battery contacts - I haven't cleaned it up yet, but for ~$30 I'm not complaining :)

 

Otherwise it's been a bit slim pickin's here for cameras in thrift stores - I check a couple once and a while - most of them have the cheap plastic fixed-focus ones by the truckload, and sometimes a few of the Brownie Hawkeye/Hawkeye Flash cameras (the bakelite ones that take 620 film), which I'm not terribly interested in, but otherwise not a great deal.

 

Definitely worth checking, though.

[waite_watson]

Wow,my local Goodwill thinks every 'old' camera is priceless!Right now setting in their case is a plain old Argus C4 with half the case $49.99! In the past they've has a Kodak 'brownie' regular 8 movie camera $49.99! It seems whoever prices their stuff at our Goodwill doesn't know their stuff,oh well,let it rot on their shelf,but it is a shame that I can't get a decent old camera at a fair price at my Goodwill.

[silverscape]

oh heck yeah! You can definitely find some good stuff at thrift shops! I haven't bought any still cameras at thrift shops yet, but I did get a couple of nice 8mm movie cameras for dirt cheap. I bought a Bell and Howell "Director's Series" camera at a thrift shop one time. It was selling for $12, but everything was half off that day so I got it for $6! It works great too, I've actually shot a couple of movies with it. I have seen a lot of Argus C3's show up from time to time, although they tend to sell for about the same as you'd find on eBay, maybe around $15. It really depends on what particular shop you go to. I've seen some cameras go for really cheap, but I've seen other places where I thought they were crazy for how much they were asking. But it's definitely worth looking. You never know what you'll find. Sometimes, like you said, they just don't know what they're putting on the shelves and just assume it's junk like the rest of the stuff.

[zane1664879013]

Shhhh!

 

Dangit, now everybody knows!

 

I did score a nifty Sears 35rf for $2 at a local thrift. It apparently looked too much like the plastic junk they normally have. And a box camera from the '30s in exc. condition for $5. Too much fun, really.

[grapegeek]

I'm with that guy above, in the Seattle area it seems that the ebay sellers either wipe out the stock of old cameras before anyone can get them, or the prices are so high I might as well buy them off of ebay. The only deals I've ever found have been at garage sales, where I did once get a almost mint Canonet QL-17 GIII for about $10 and a black bodied Minolta XD for about $20...

[charles_stobbs3]

Goodwill has an on line website to auction cameras nationwide.

http://www.shopgoodwill.com/listings/

Check cameras and electronics. Some of the local stores don't give very accurate desriptions.

[patrick j dempsey]

Goodwill started doing the auction thing a few years ago, IF you are lucky enough to live in a place where Goodwill doesn't put the cameras in the auction case, or doesn't jack them up to rediculous prices, consider yourself very lucky. My local Goodwill's here in Asheville rarely have anything as they get picked clean pretty regularily. Last non P&S related camera item I saw was a Nikon zoom lens in a rotting case with mildew covering the outside of the lens and fungus completely coving the inside... for $65. It was just kinda silly. On the other hand, if it says "Polaroid" on it, they usually slap a $2 price tag on it... even if it's a Polaroid 4x5 loader in the original box. ;)

[david_m]

You wont find many (if any) any classic cameras at a Goodwill, at least not in the half dozen stores I regularly haunt around here. What you will mostly find are incredible bargains on quality point and shoots. I recently found several Nikon One Touch cameras for $2.99. I've also seen Yashica T and Canon Sureshots. These cameras have excellent quality 4-element lenses. Personally, I feel the peak has been reached for the disposal of these cameras and now I'm seeing discarded early version digital cameras.<div></div>

[Andy Collins]

David, you are right about the point and shoots-I've found an excellent Nikon L35AF with instructions for $8.99, the Pentax PC35AF w/PC35winder I mentioned above for $3.99, and a like-new Canon SureShot Z180u for $15.99. These were still selling for $170.00 at Best Buy just before Christmas! Our Goodwill stores seem to have a lot of '90s p&s cameras in different states of repair usually for $2.99 to $10.99. The classics still keep popping up on occasion though. I also found a Polaroid 250 with the Zeiss-Ikon viewfinder for $4.99 and a Yashica Electro 35 GSN for $25. I also am starting to see the digitals, although these have significantly higher prices for cameras usually worth much less.

[brian_schall]

My Goodwill store doesn't put any of the cameras in the store. Everything goes straight to the auction site. Trouble is, no one who works at Goodwill knows anything about cameras. The describtions are all the same, the buttons work but don't know anything thing else. Worse than the Ebay "I don't know much about cameras but..."

[patrick j dempsey]

I have shopped on shopgoodwill.com about a year ago. Even then, it was starting to get pricey. Nowadays, a ton of people know about this site and you get prices driven up to eBay level for goods that are generally in really poor condition. MOST eBay sellers at least attempt to test products and to make sure they are clean and in top condition, if not functional. shopgoodwill.com stuff looks just like the stuff in the stores, dirty and dingy and needed a deep cleaning, with no guarantee on functionality. They also have (or at least did a year ago) a poor interface which is buggy and the two times I used the site I ended up in long back-and-forth emails trying to sort out bugs in my credit card verification. I sort through the site occasionally but I havn't seen any deals there any better than eBay lately.

[patrick j dempsey]

Also, one of the items I got from that site infected my other cameras with mildew. :(

[bcostin]

I'm glad you all have better luck than me. It's a rare day when I find any camera related items worth buying at our local Goodwill. Plenty of cheap plastic giveaway cameras and maybe a 600-series Polaroid or two. I suspect that most vintage equipment goes directly to their auction site. Or else it gets smashed and thrown into the sealed dumpsters by the hamhanded sorters who don't realize what they're looking at.

 

It's true about P&S cameras, though. If you know what you're looking for you can sometimes find some nice bargains on those.

[Brian]

<P>We don't have this organization in the UK. What we have is a number of different charities running their own chains of stores (hence the name "charity shops"). They each have their own pricing policies, and some always overprice old cameras, while others practically give them away. None of them, AFAIK, has attempted an online auction business yet.</P><P>I've had some good buys from them, including a pristine Kiev 4 for 5GBP (that's $10).</P><P>Most of their stock, inevitably, is plastic P&S cameras, but you just have to be patient.</P>

[don_e]

I've gotten some nice cameras from the Goodwill auction site. No special bargains (if the staff doesn't know the value, other bidders do). Lately, some starting prices are too high for what the item appears to be.

 

It is not easy to tell what the item is and its condition. Part is due to staff ignorance. I saw a Yashica described as a Nikon because it had a Nikon lens cap on (and no photo w/o the lens cap). Descriptions are lacking in detail, the sort of detail a buyer might want to know, such as is the lens scratched and if so on which surface.

 

And what is up with their item photo policy? They seem to deliberately post dreadful photos requiring flash and often overprinted with "Goodwill" etc. Do they actually think someone would steal this crap?

 

Some are, I think, deliberately misfocused.

 

Their auction site, iow, does not fill me with confidence, and I would rather bid on ebay.

[arlen_c._elkins]

I have found a few bargains in thrift stores, such as an old art deco argus for $4.99. However the worst thing I have ever seen occur in a thrift store is where one store had several lenses donated, and the sticky back price tags were stuck directly on the front elements of the lenses!

[ken_jeanette1]

IMO, the goodwill site is fun to watch, but there are no bargains to be had. The few quality items I saw on there had attracted the collector bids. And the picture business is a disaster, out of focus, never get what is the meat and potatoes of the camera, and that infernal logo splashed across it like we don't know we're onn the goodwill site. Then also, there are the stores that price everything with a high starting bid. $19.59 for a plastic fantastic toy, or a Nikon F. They should let the market take care of what is going to sell at what price. The plastic will sit even at $1.00

[mark_satola1]

Working cameras I've gotten from the various thrifts around town: Canon AF35ML (f1.9 lens!), $2; Canon EOS Rebel 2000 with standard kit lens, $5; German Kodak Retinette 1A, $5; Polaroid SX-70 II, $8; Polaroid 350, $25 (a little pricier than I would have liked, but I got it anyway); Olympus iS-2000 DLX, with handgrip, $20 (originally retailed around $800, yikes); many others that aren't coming to mind at the moment. I never saw a medium format or large format camera at any thrift.

 

One day while I was at work my GF called to say she was at the neighborhood Goodwill, and was a Kodak Medalist for $10 of interest? After I got up from the floor, we determined it was actually a plastic 35mm Kodak from probably the 1980s, with the model name just recycled. When I showed her a picture of the WWII-era Medalist, she said she would have bought that right away without even bothering to call; it's just that she'd heard me say "Medalist" before. Couldn't understand what would be so special about a crappy P&S, but she figured she ought to check....

 

The best non-working camera thrift find I ever had was a mid-1920s Q.R.S. Kam-Ra, an early 35mm camera made in Chicago, with its own cartridges that you loaded film into, mottled brown Bakelite. The winding crank also cocked and fired the shutter, and my example is like most of them, the crank has broken off. $7.00 at a junky resale shop out in the sticks. They didn't even know it was a camera.

 

Never been to the Goodwill auction site. Considering how destroyed some of these donated cameras can be, it seems like way too much of a risk to buy something you can't hold.

[bomobob]

The list of cameras I've found at Salvation Army and Value Village stores here in Montreal is mind boggling. It's gotten to become such a sickness that I run over to one near work almost every day at lunch.

 

I need help.

 

Polaroid Sun 660

Polaroid Spectra

Polaroid SX-70

Minolta Autopak 250

Minolta Hi-Matic 7s

GAF Memo 35EE

Canonet QL17 GIII

Vivitar 22mm

Voigtlander VF135

Olympus Trip35

Agfa Optima Sensor Flash

Olympus Pen EE-2

Brownie Reflex

Ricoh Auto-Half E2

Imperial Mark X!! (620)

Kodak Brownie Bullet

Zeiss Ikon Contaflex II

Voigtlander Vitomatic IIA

Konica C35

 

And most recently an Agfa Silette with all 3 lenses!

[ken_kartes]

<p>I didn't know a Konica S2 weighed 8 pounds! They are real heavy on their weights which added to overcharges on shipping. I buy elsewhere now after they ignored my feedback.</p>

[ken_kartes]

<p><a href="http://www.shopgoodwill.com/auctions/KONICA-CAMERA-with-Kamera-Bag-and-extras-4398427">http://www.shopgoodwill.com/auctions/KONICA-CAMERA-with-Kamera-Bag-and-extras-4398427</a></p>

[ken_kartes]

<p>I didn't know a Konica S2 weighed 8 pounds! They are real heavy on their weights which added to overcharges on shipping. I buy elsewhere now after they ignored my feedback.</p>

[frank_thompson2]

<p>

<p >When addressing the stated concerns; poor quality photos, watermarks over images, and outrageous overinflated shipping charges, the management at Shopgoodwill does not seem to remotely interested in anything more than them most superficial pretence at customer service.</p>

</p>