{"id":86965,"date":"2025-08-23T08:00:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T08:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/86965\/"},"modified":"2025-08-23T08:00:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T08:00:09","slug":"charity-shop-worker-going-through-bag-of-donations-stunned-at-what-she-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/86965\/","title":{"rendered":"Charity shop worker going through bag of donations stunned at what she finds"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Manchester Evening News asked charity shop workers the weirdest things they’ve found\"BritishYou can find a real bargain in a charity shop – but not everything donated makes it to the rails(Image: Manchester Evening News)<\/p>\n

Charity shops can be a real treasure trove when hunting for a bargain<\/a>. With the environmental<\/a> impact of ‘fast fashion’ on many shoppers’ minds – plus the rising cost of living<\/a> in recent years – their popularity has soared.<\/p>\n

But not every item donated to Manchester’s charity shops<\/a> becomes available for shoppers to buy.<\/p>\n

Items such as clothes, books and children’s toys are popular donations and can often make the perfect pre-loved purchase.<\/p>\n

Never miss a story with the MEN’s daily Catch Up newsletter – get it in your inbox by signing up here<\/a><\/p>\n

Yet there are some eyebrow-raising items that find their way into charity shops which could never possibly be sold on.<\/p>\n

“We were sorting through the donations and I saw it,” said one worker at the Oxfam store on Oldham<\/a> Street, in the Northern Quarter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

\"Oxfam,Oxfam, on Oldham Street(Image: Manchester Evening News )<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

Unusual donations are surprisingly common in the city’s charity shops.<\/p>\n

Charities often have lists of items which they cannot accept, which are usually found on their websites.<\/p>\n

Generous donors don’t always check the list though – while some hand over items by mistake.<\/p>\n

“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<\/a> Approach.<\/p>\n

\"TomTom Lowe, sales assistant at Barnardo’s Piccadilly (Image: Manchester Evening News )<\/p>\n

“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<\/a> lost property – that’s where the teeth came from.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, see a similar pattern.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“I definitely think there’s a sitcom in working in a charity shop. Every day there’s a unique thing donated.<\/p>\n

\"BritishBritish Heart Foundation, near Piccadilly Gardens(Image: Manchester Evening News)<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

The city’s charity shops try to sell on whatever they can.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

\"RSPCARSPCA Northern Quarter(Image: Manchester Evening News )<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

Other charity shops also benefit from the odd luxury item being tucked inside a donation bag.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

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Barnardo’s sales assistant Tom added: “We had a classic sewing machine one, that was quite cool. It was vintage, an industrial one.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Manchester Evening News asked charity shop workers the weirdest things they’ve foundYou can find a real bargain…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86966,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,193,43734,59,2951,3969,43735,1758,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-86965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-charity","tag-charity-shops","tag-gb","tag-manchester-city-centre","tag-northern-quarter","tag-piccadilly-gardens","tag-shopping","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}