The Manchester Evening News asked charity shop workers the weirdest things they’ve found
You can find a real bargain in a charity shop – but not everything donated makes it to the rails(Image: Manchester Evening News)
Charity shops can be a real treasure trove when hunting for a bargain. With the environmental impact of ‘fast fashion’ on many shoppers’ minds – plus the rising cost of living in recent years – their popularity has soared.
But not every item donated to Manchester’s charity shops becomes available for shoppers to buy.
Items such as clothes, books and children’s toys are popular donations and can often make the perfect pre-loved purchase.
Never miss a story with the MEN’s daily Catch Up newsletter – get it in your inbox by signing up here
Yet there are some eyebrow-raising items that find their way into charity shops which could never possibly be sold on.
“We were sorting through the donations and I saw it,” said one worker at the Oxfam store on Oldham Street, in the Northern Quarter.
“I’d not been working here long. It was my first time sorting through the donations as well. It was in a bag full of clothes and children’s toys.”
Oxfam, on Oldham Street(Image: Manchester Evening News )
As the worker rifled through the bag of donated items, she was stunned to discover a sex toy in an open package – containing its description and size.
“I didn’t know what to think,” the worker added. “[My colleagues] all just laughed. What do you say to that? We just had to throw it away.”
Unusual donations are surprisingly common in the city’s charity shops.
Charities often have lists of items which they cannot accept, which are usually found on their websites.
Generous donors don’t always check the list though – while some hand over items by mistake.
“We had a pair of false teeth that fell out of somebody’s backpack,” said Tom Lowe, sales assistant at Barnardo’s on Piccadilly Station Approach.
Tom Lowe, sales assistant at Barnardo’s Piccadilly (Image: Manchester Evening News )
“They unfortunately landed in a colleague’s hands. Plenty of anti-bac was needed after that. But we are quite prone to having weird and quirky things. We get Metrolink’s lost property – that’s where the teeth came from.”
Tom says the shop he works at has a high footfall, being so close to the railway station, compared to other stores outside the city centre.
It makes the shop busier – but also more likely to see surprising donations. Staff working down the road at the British Heart Foundation shop, near Piccadilly Gardens, see a similar pattern.
One worker, who asked not to be named, said: “We’ve had a whole bag of left shoes, we’ve had a whole bag of wigs.
“I definitely think there’s a sitcom in working in a charity shop. Every day there’s a unique thing donated.
British Heart Foundation, near Piccadilly Gardens(Image: Manchester Evening News)
“You never know what you are going to get in a bag.” Her colleague added: “There was a dead creepy doll. Nobody would buy it. It was kept in a room for ages.”
The city’s charity shops try to sell on whatever they can.
Some workers described trying to find buyers for items on eBay when they have been unable to shift them in-store, while goods that simply can’t be sold off are recycled as much as possible.
Not all unusual donations spell bad news for charity shop staff, however – and some have the potential to make hundreds of pounds for good causes.
“We get some high-end things, from brands like Burberry and Barber,” said Karen Opper, manager at the RSPCA store on Oak Street, in the Northern Quarter.
“It’s a mix. There are a lot of business people that live round here, and there is social housing as well. We try to cater for everyone.
RSPCA Northern Quarter(Image: Manchester Evening News )
“We get students that come in looking for fashion, and there are people who don’t have a lot of money to spend. We will always price things in that range and we have a pound rail for anything that we’ve not managed to sell, rather than sending it to landfill.”
Other charity shops also benefit from the odd luxury item being tucked inside a donation bag.
A worker at the British Heart Foundation store said: “We’ve had some really expensive stuff before – a Louis Vuitton mac, a Chloe handbag. We’ve had quite a lot of money for them.”
Join our Manc Life WhatsApp group HERE
Barnardo’s sales assistant Tom added: “We had a classic sewing machine one, that was quite cool. It was vintage, an industrial one.”