At the world’s best thrift store Monday, Kolby Miller decided not to buy a pogo stick.
He’s usually interested in Polo, not pogo. The massive Salvation Army resale shop in Ann Arbor has been a reliable place to find name brand golf shirts, suitable for his job in tech sales.
“Salvation Armani,” as University of Michigan students call it, is a verdant isle of aisles where a puffy black North Face jacket was priced at $24.99 this week and an Under Armour version cost $8 less. Amid the Salvation Army’s 29 southeast Michigan stores , agreed manager Catherine Wale, hers is understood to be the most likely to receive a Coach bag alongside a toaster in a box of donated goods.
That still does not, officially, make it the world’s best thrift store . The title was awarded Monday by a guy named Rob from Ypsilanti who was looking at books, which are mostly priced at two for 99 cents.
Luxury goods are an attraction, though, even on the first day of move-in week for fall semester, when a larger than usual throng was perhaps more interested in furnishings than fashion. As young minds arrived at U-M in search of illumination and their desks needed the same, a 33,616-square-foot store with dozens of cheap used lamps and endless other household items became a logical destination.