The Best Guide to Thrift Stores In Sacramento

+Most of My "Thrfting" is in the greater Sacramento area, so I'll need to rely on you, my readers for thrifting tips in other cities, states and countries, please write in often.

Some of the bigger chain stores such as Goodwill while being generally great places for clothing and electronic components, will by location have better selection of certain types of items, for instance:

Goodwills In Sacramento:

The location on 2502 Watt Ave in Sacramento (old Tower Records site)
is where all of the local DVDs and most CD's go, (nearly all of both are less than $5 each, and there is big selection). 

The location on 390 Plaza Drive in Folsom gets some of the best quality merchandise in the area because they get donations from nearly only expensive neighborhoods.

And the Outlet locations such as the new one at 5400 Date Avenue are both horrifying (in terms of organization and quality control) and delightfully cheep, its hard to find good stuff, but when you do, it's practically free.

Goodwills in general though are one of the best places to find awesomely bad stuff for this blog

Thrift Town locations in Sacramento are nearly as good as the aforementioned Goodwill's and better than the ones at the bottom of the page, they have a huge selection of clothing and kitchen type items, as well as a big book area where the books are mostly sorted by author, which helps a ton, they also seem to keep getting great obscure kitchen items (of which I now own many).

410 El Camino Ave is probably a better store as far as selection and organization go, but
6328 Fair Oaks Blvd is in a much safer neighborhood and feels much safer to be in and around

Another amazing location in Sacramento for absolutely everything (and my number one place to look for furniture [goodwill is second]) is Deseret Industries (3000 Auburn Blvd) They are by far the overall cleanest, and cheapest-ly priced thrift store in the Sacramento area that actually has a ton of stuff to look through. 

and if you don't mind big crowds, check out EcoThrift 7305 Greenback Ln for a huge selection of clothing, kitchenware and general home goods, with some toys and electronics too

Besides these giant thrift locations there are many other good thrift stores in Sacramento, for example:

Medium sized locations:

St. Vincent De Paul 2275 Watt Ave is  a great place to find clothing and kitchen items as well, a smallish (the size of a large house vs. a large grocers store) shop, they always seem to have an amazing bargain, or just an amazing place to find weird stuff for photographing (at this time I cannot identify an actual link with St. Vincent's thrift store in Reno, but it is a similarly awesome store, which often has amazing furniture for amazing prices).


and Emmanuel Thrift at 4120 El Camino Ave is even better, a quick scan of the store is deceivingly poor, upon close inspection, the clothing offerings for example are limited, but I have found a couple amazing items that were ridiculously undervalued and are too cool for me to re-sell even though I know I would make 3-5 times as much as I spent, look around, there are diamonds in there. 

and the smaller: 



Assistance League thrift store on 2528 Yorktown Ave  is a very small store, but when I last went I bought 5 things and took almost no photographs, they seem to only have a few things, but most of those few things were very cheaply priced and cool.

I found similar results with the American Cancer Society Discovery Shop (try saying that 3 times fast) 2744 Marconi Ave I asked why they seemed to only have good quality mid to high end merchandise, and I was told they only keep the best of what is donated and donate the rest to other charities, I guess the moral of this is, If you want to thrift shop but don't like dirty people or piles of potentially dirty goods, go to a smaller but well known store, the prices are a little higher, but you won't need to sort through garbage to find a gem, and you know who you are helping too. 

And the SPCA Thrift Store on 1517 E St while having a large amount of unusual animal themed items, is hands down the only store you could really go to if you hoped for any pet supplies, and oddly a great source for chandlers. basically I realized, that many of the people who donates to this store are the stereotypical pet lovers, rich old people, who have cool vintage stuff, and alot of weird nick knacks, a fun store with surprising deals


there are other small stores to look at too though for example:


Second Chance Thrift Store Segunda On 5326 Auburn Blvd is a small store, and it feels a little dirty, even though nothing actually seemed unclean on inspection, I wouldn't recommend this store, but the clothing at it is separated by size, not just the adults but the kids clothing too, and (please tell me if I'm wrong in the comments) I believe it is the only thrift store to separate individually any children's clothing sizes below 5T, which is really nice (to not have to go through tons of stuff you know you don't want).

This 'n' That Thrift and Gift 2590 21st St is probably the cleanest extremely crowded thrift store I know of, it seems to only get high praise and strong complaints, (particularly regarding the copious use of incense, which also overpowered me)  it has a cool retro feel, and indeed seems to get a large amount of vintage items which are sold at a mid level price range (compared to say Goodwill or Deseret Industries) but I would still say that the prices are usually more than fair overall, sadly, there was only women's clothing so I had little reason to look

Stores that I don't bother with: (or wouldn't  if I wasn't looking for pic's of awesomely bad stuff)


The Salvation Army, Yes I did get the Nike's there, and I go often because there is one fairly close to my home, but that said, most things there aren't a comparatively good deal, unless it's a great sale day, and even then, when I was collecting milkshake glasses,(I now have 8 matching)  I found 4 on a 1/2 price day, they were listed at 3.49 each, (before the sale at that location I'd paid $1-2 each for the one's I'd found) I complained and the price was taken to reasonable levels before the sale was applied, but I don't like the hassle. I find this true of all locations.


Teen Challenge Thrift Store on 10025 Folsom Blvd is equally ho-hum, I did once find the board game "Go For Broke" which I have been looking for my whole life, but generally I find little I want to own there, also I have an issue with stores which have a never-ending % off deal, as if it makes people feel like they get a deal, when the prices are jacked up to cover the discount


also the ever so cleverly named "The Thrift Store" on 6150 Auburn Blvd of whom I have heard quite negative allegations, does have a lot of clothing, and I have read good reviews for them on that (I wear 2XLT and sadly don't bother with thrift clothing much) but beyond the clothing, if anything looks like you might want it, it is behind glass or a counter, and you can only look at it with an employee watching you (not good for photographing stuff) perhaps it keeps things from being damaged or stolen, but their lack of trust makes me uneasy right back at them.


Some other Goodwill stores are less awesome and smaller, such as...

1312 Fulton Ave
4040 Florin Rd
2265 Arden Way
and 
4126 Manzanita Ave

There is nothing in particularly wrong with these stores, they're just smaller and just don't have anything special to recommend them