“Curated Vintage” vs “Old, Used Stuff”

This post will highlight the monetary differences in thrifting that come with terminology.

As I have stated in prior posts, the connotation of thrifting has had a great shift in the coming years. With it, the terminology used to describe thrift store products has changed and enabled companies to capitalize off of this terminological shift. This post will highlight the true, if any, differences between what thrift store marketers like to call “curated vintage” versus “old, used stuff" which is what thrift stores are selling.

Curated Vintage is defined as the pieces in the store being carefully selected to store specific criteria, while old, used stuff is a collection of all goods donated to the facility without any further sorting of the products.

In order to analyze the monetary differences with stores that use different terminology but both sell gently used items, we will look at two thrift stores in my hometown of Concord, North Carolina.

First, Nothing New. Nothing New is a thrift shop located in Concord, NC that sells “curated vintage” clothing pieces. Many of the items they sell can be found at cheaper thrift stores such as Goodwill or Value Village, however because the pieces they have in store are carefully selected (and possibly hold more value), the term curated vintage is coined. Depending on the product, some items such as the new thrifted flannel’s advertised on their home page cost upwards of $50. When a consumer comes to purchase this product, the term curated vintage is used to justify the upsell of the product.

Meanwhile, thrift stores like Goodwill get items from all brands, all luxury levels, and still provide a one-price method (ex. $5 for all T-Shirts even if a Calvin Klein shirt is in that section). Although both thrift stores are selling gently used, older clothes, one store used the gullibility of consumers to purchase a product at a much higher price solely based off of what terminology was used to describe the old, used stuff.