July 29, 2025 • 24 mins
In this episode of 'Garage Sales Unhinged,' hosts Julie and Jake share personal anecdotes about vacations they took during their childhood and delve into Julie's recent trip to Hawaii, where she explored how the island community handles the secondhand market. Julie visited Goodwill and a boutique thrift store on Oahu, noting the unique challenges and opportunities in the local resale market.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:03):
Welcome to garage sales Unhinged.
Where the characters are as quirky as the vines.
I'm Julie. And I'm Jake.
Join us as we dive into the wildworld of garage sales, yard
sales, estate sales, and anywhere second hand sales are
happening from. Bizarre bargains to hilarious
haggles. You won't believe the stories
we've got lined up. Let's get unhinged.
(00:24):
Jake, you know I love to travel.And it's not just I love to
travel. I like vacation.
I don't want to. There's a difference, yeah.
Yeah, I want. I want to travel for vacation.
I want to go somewhere and be waited on and sleep in and do
(00:44):
all the fun stuff and forget about reality.
That's what I want to do. OK, breaking news.
When's the last time you went onvacation?
Oh. It's been a while.
Yes. What's your most memorable
vacation? Well, buy me a little bit of
time while I think about that. No, we're going to sit here once
(01:10):
I have a very clear story of a vacation from our childhood
whenever we drove out to Carlsbad Caverns.
OK. We had the Astro minivan, the
Astro minivan, we had the bucketseats up in front.
Mom and dad sat in we and then we had a middle row and then we
had a third row. And to get to the third row,
(01:34):
like we would crawl over the middle road to get back to the
third row. And on our road trips, there was
always two people in the middle row and one person in the back
row. And usually that third, that
third row was our older brother.Right.
He was like, I'm, I'm a, I'm a Moody teenager, so I need to sit
(01:55):
back here with my Walkman and listen to the Guns and Roses
soundtrack. And yeah, Earth was.
Mine but yes do all that well onthese Rd. trips.
You probably listening to Extreme.
He had like, yeah, he was right.Like in retrospect, he wasn't
edgy, he was lame. Not was, is.
(02:17):
So on these Rd. trips, mom and dad came up with a new rule and
said, hey, you know, we're goingto switch out.
And so that each one of the kids, we could have access to
the third row and get a little bit of freedom.
We could stretch out. Like usually if you had the 3rd
row, you just lay down because like you're in the middle.
You got to sit up. And I remember it was my turn to
(02:39):
have the 3rd row and I'm laying down in the back.
We're driving through New Mexicodesert and I'm laying down in
the back reading one of my books.
And our dad from the driver's seat goes, Julie, you need to
sit up. And it, you know, just really
enjoy this. God's kind of, this is beautiful
out here. And I remember I sat up a little
(03:00):
bit, looked outside and I said, it's the same view I saw 10
minutes ago and laid back down. And he didn't like that I
responded like that. So I lost my privileges of the
third row. I know.
I was like, what am I supposed to do?
Just sit there and stare outside?
Or would you like me to, like, read and, like, become more
educated? Yeah.
(03:22):
Yeah. OK.
I think, I think one of mine wasa church trip to Colorado.
Like the youth group, like, oh, we're all going to go skiing and
everybody can pull their money and we're going to go skiing and
everything like that. And it's my first go at it.
And I got a boot size that was too small and it rubbed and
(03:44):
rubbed and rubbed and rubbed until it was like really bad.
And that got really bad until I got blood poisoning and I
probably almost died and I didn't know it.
And like, I think I got like medicine from someone I don't
know. And I got better and it was more
(04:06):
fun after that. But the trip up there was more
than memorable thing because youhave a, I think it was a rented
bus or something like that of about 15 people.
And our, our brother and I had at the, at the time, we were
very much into the Adult Swim show space, Ghost Coast to
(04:28):
Coast. And I had the soundtrack to
like, I had like acd of, of songs that were on the show.
And it was, they were all very annoying original songs.
They're obnoxious and annoying. And he and I were just singing
them the whole, it felt like thewhole way.
I'm sure for everybody else in the bus, it felt like it was the
whole way. And it was.
(04:48):
It was fun to be obnoxious. Maybe because you guys did that,
I don't ever want to ride in a car for that long again.
Yeah, for sure. Are you planning a garage sale,
yard sale, or estate sale and need some help?
Look no further than Garage SaleSupply.
They provide top notch resourcesand expert advice to help you
(05:11):
host the perfect sell. From pricing tips to promotional
strategies, they've got you covered.
Visit garagesalesupply.com and make your next sell at success.
Well, so today I want to talk about a recent vacation I went
on. I took our one of our nieces
(05:31):
with me and we went to Hawaii and I've been to Hawaii several
times. Beautiful state, been to some of
the islands. This time I went to the island
of Oahu and one of the things I wanted to do there was I wanted
to go to thrift stores and understand how an island
community dealt with the second hand market.
(05:53):
And it was really interesting whenever I brought this up to
some of the locals of oh, this is what I'm this one I'm
researching, this one I'm looking at.
They all had stories about the second hand market in Hawaii.
So couple places that I went to,went to the Goodwill there.
So Goodwill we've mentioned before, it's, it's almost like a
(06:14):
franchise type thing, but each individual Goodwill is its own
business. They have their own directors,
their own volunteers. This Goodwill that we went to,
Pristine, it was clean. They had a surfboard there for
$60.00 which I'm seeing was a bargain.
The clothes there were clean andorganized.
(06:38):
Their staff there were very busyre hanging things, putting stuff
up. It was it was the nicest
goodwill I've ever been to. Also looking like it's funny.
I walked through some of the home decor things at Goodwill
and they were selling 2 bags. In each bag was $5.00 but 2 bags
(07:00):
of seashells. OK.
And I felt like that was a RIP off.
I'm like all. Right.
I can just go outside and get that.
You might as well sell me a bag of leaves that fell off a tree,
you know? But I ended up I did buy a dress
from there that I can wear for work.
It was it was actually a really nice dress.
(07:22):
But yeah, it was one of those things of, again, I mentioned a
previous episode, I want to go and try to find a graphic tee
that is low, you know, has a local flare on it or something
like that. While they didn't find it at
Goodwill, it was still fun to walk around and look at
everything. And they also had really clean
dressing rooms. And like, sometimes you go into
(07:43):
a Goodwill and they don't have dressing rooms.
But this one? Drop trail right there, right?
Yeah. So we went to Goodwill.
The other place that we went to was a thrift store on Hawaii.
It was up actually at the North Shore.
And I want to say it's more of aboutique slash thrift store.
(08:04):
So some stuff the owners curatedfrom local estate sells.
Sometimes people bring things in.
She hasn't. She was saying that she doesn't
really accept donations anymore because she wants to make sure
that she's maintaining this highquality of the things that she's
selling. But she does have things from
(08:25):
local artists that are there, like jewelry and a couple print
shirts. So I actually ended up getting
one of the print shirts by a local artist there, but we were
talking to her about her space. She was in a different space
down to miles down the road. They had to move to this other
location. The other space, while it was
(08:45):
like double the size of what shecurrently has, it didn't have
any AC in it. So during the summer was really
hot and it the building needed some updating and maintenance
and so they had to move to a newlocation.
This new location that she's in,I think she had, I want to say
(09:06):
it was like 600 or 700 square feet.
So not very big for a store. She pays $10,000 a month.
Yikes 0. And that's one of the things
that she was talking about on the North Shore.
There's not a lot of thrift stores there.
And part of it is is that she said that a lot of tourists come
(09:29):
in and they see thrift store andthey think, oh, that's not good
quality stuff or, you know, theywant to buy something new or
whatever that may be. So they well, she doesn't have a
lot of competition there. It's also she's battling this
idea that second hand sells is dirty.
(09:50):
She's also battling the high rent that comes with being on an
island community. And she would love to be even
further along the main strip of the North Shore community.
But she's like, the rent just goes up.
And I, you know, she can't like if your rent's $10,000 a month,
like what do you got to bring home to also pay your other
(10:10):
bills and, you know, have life outside of that all.
Right. It's going to be really tough to
operate in a space where, you know, Zuckerberg is actively
just trying to buy the entire damn island, you know?
Yeah, there is actually one of the Hawaiian islands, the I
(10:30):
think it's the former CEO of Oracle owns 8th of the island.
Is that Ellison? I don't know.
Who cares? You know what?
It was nice when we didn't have to know the names of CE OS.
Yeah, to hell with that. I commit to not remember
anymore. There you go.
So you know, I, I went to Hawaiithinking like, oh, the second
(10:51):
hand market has to be great there because you have so many
tourists that leave things behind that they can't take with
them or like lost luggage that like now the airport like, hey,
people aren't going to pick thisup and they give it to whatever
kind of community group that cansell it.
Also being an island nation of you know shipping things there
(11:14):
very expensive and takes a long time.
I have a friend that lives thereand Kim was saying that whenever
you order a mattress, you're waiting about 3 months to get
the mattress because it has to come over on a boat.
And and like what they have there in stock is not like it
may be a few weeks worth, but it's not like we have here on
(11:35):
the mainland. But it was still interesting.
So this this thrift store slash boutique slash consignment
store, very clean, really cute stuff in it.
You have to have a vehicle to get there.
So it's not along like a touriststrand or something like that.
(11:56):
The Goodwill, lots of people in there.
We had an Uber driver, really great, nice guy.
And he was saying that the Filipino community tends to go
to the garage sales and Goodwilland stuff like that.
And they buy clothes to resell so that there's a huge resale
market, Hawaii. And I was like, oh, like they
(12:19):
sell between the islands and they said, no, they ship it to
wherever it goes in the world because as a buyer, you, you are
paying for that shipping cost. So my friend that lives there,
she was saying that some of the stuff that is now being
considered collector items is like the moo moos from the 70s
(12:40):
and the 80s. Now younger generations of
Hawaiian women are trying to find those moo moos to wear to
fancy events and all that stuff.And they, they doll them all up
with accessories and things likethat.
But it's kind of like, oh, you mean the moo moo that's in my
grandma's closet? Right.
Like that's actually a highly desired thing.
(13:01):
Yeah. Yeah.
You know, you're bringing up a couple of things I think are
really interesting. I mean, like, I, I love that you
did that, that you wouldn't checked out the scene because an
island, an island state, an island nation, like just by its
nature, like the ecosystem of stuff is much, much, much
smaller. Right.
(13:22):
So like things get recycled I guess that much quicker.
But then you also mentioned likethere's a lot more expense in
getting stuff to and from that place.
But as you're going in there andyou're looking around in
goodwill and stuff, how did the prices compare to what you'd see
(13:43):
on the mainland? Pretty good.
Like I expected them to be more expensive.
I want to say the dress I bought.
So the way that this Goodwill worked is that like they just
had signs around the the facility that was like, T-shirts
are three dollars, slacks and jeans are $5, dresses are.
(14:04):
About like standard, right? Yeah, yeah.
So I think I bought my dress for7 bucks and like, and I tried on
some other clothes, it just wasn't the right fit for me, or
I didn't like the color ones I had it on or whatever.
So yeah, I spent $7.00 on a dress that's currently at the
dry cleaners and I'll wear it atmy next business meeting.
And it looks nice. It looks fancy.
(14:25):
I found it really interesting too what you said about that
shop owner kind of trying to turn around the sentiment that
oh man, thrift is lower quality.Right.
Where but you're also mentioningthere's some people that are
going, no, no, what you actuallywant is the stuff at the thrift
shop and not anything new. And so and we talked about it
(14:50):
before kind of the standards forproduction being better in the
past because it it wasn't as youknow, mass produced.
At some point I wonder if the flip the script will flip and
the perception will be that anything new is actually low
quality. What you want is old.
(15:13):
I mean, I think there is alreadythat because she was saying, I
mean she has name brand stuff onthe racks.
She also has things that you canbuy at Target, but the things
that she curates, it's to fit the vibe that she's trying to
create for her shop. OK.
So again, she's like, yeah, there's things in here that you
(15:34):
can buy that you're going to spend 50 bucks on and it's going
to be a bargain. And then there's other things
that you can spend $5 on and it's still a bargain, but you
can buy that at Target, but you just bought it here.
I will say this too, because we did go into Target and Ross and
stuff there. People should know this, but
(15:54):
they carry like different swimsuits than what we carry
here in the mainland. They also, I've learned this
whenever I went to Key West one year.
If you ever need a sweatshirt, go to an island nation, go to a
hot zone and put sweatshirts there because you can get them
pretty cheap because those are not in high demand.
Yeah, that. Makes.
(16:15):
Sense but yeah, it was it was interesting that the Uber driver
we had he was actually a collector of comic books and
he's a reseller of comic books and I was really curious about
this. I'm going so how do you find
comic books here in Hawaii? He's like sometimes whenever
people find out that he he collects comic books, he's like,
(16:38):
I get calls all the time going, hey, we're we're emptying out my
uncle's attic. We found a box.
Do you want it? And he's like elevate.
He's like, yes, I want it. I want it.
What he also does is that he flies to the mainland, so he's
coming to Phoenix in a few months to go to a comic book
convention to either sell stuff or to buy more things.
(17:00):
And then he'll take it back for his resale business and find a
buyer or he just enjoys looking at them and he keeps it for his
own collection. But yeah, he was saying how big
of the resale market is there? He And I think also too, because
people tend to want to move to aparadise and maybe don't realize
(17:20):
how expensive it is or, you know, hey, I need to offset my
income and that type of stuff. And so they turn to reselling
items that they can buy for pennies on the dollar and then
sell it for a little bit more. And then that's how they make
some income. But also the day, so it was on
Sunday, we were going to Pearl Harbor and across the, the
(17:41):
highway, there was a massive swap meet at the Aloha Bowl, the
stadium there. And we didn't, we weren't able
to go to the swap meet. But it's kind of like, I think
they, I don't know how often they do the swap meet, but it
was one of those things of instead of having a garage sale
in your neighborhood, you can come do a booth at the swap
(18:02):
meet. And people have things that
they've created, things that they're trying to sell, you
know, collectibles, that type ofstuff.
And then my friend was telling me she's like, oh, just one
neighborhood over from where we were in Oahu, took one
neighborhood over. That's the fluent neighborhood.
And whenever there's a state sells there, people like just go
(18:23):
there and swarms and stuff. Here's the other thing, Jake,
and I know I'm talking a lot, but here's the other thing.
I looked for garage sales and estate sales through the
websites that I used to find them before I went over there.
OK. None listed.
So I don't know how they list their cells in Hawaii, if they
(18:45):
have a separate website or if they use like the local
community papers. I don't know what it is, but I
was like, man, I wish I had beenable to, like, stake it out a
little bit more and going, OK, is there going to be a good
estate sale? Because I also think of like,
old Hollywood, you know, lived in Hawaii.
Yeah, like you'll find some of Bob Hope's old stuff there, you
know? Yeah.
(19:06):
Goth clubs, come on that we goth.
Yeah, no, I'm, I'm sure like surely, right.
They've got to have some more like local way of, you know,
raising awareness that these things are going on.
Like there's probably some Facebook group or something like
that. Probably, yeah.
It's it's a small island like you just it won't take much
(19:28):
effort to find it if you just goa direction and what you see a
lot of blue stop. Well, and one of the things that
there's an app that my friend told me about that a lot of the
people in her Hawaiian communityuse, it's called Macari.
(19:50):
I know MERCARI and it's it's a reselling app type thing.
You post things up there that you would want to sell.
But she said that a lot of people that have like the moo
moos that they're trying to sell.
They post them on this app to try to find stuff, so I've never
(20:11):
heard of it. I've never used it, but it looks
like similar to a Poshmark type thing.
But yeah, it's another app that apparently the a lot of people
in Hawaii use to try to sell stuff.
Well, I, I hope, would you please try to reassure our
(20:34):
listeners that you didn't spend the entire time in Hawaii going
to thrift stores and retail shops because this, this does
not sound like much of a vacation right now.
If you were the IRSI spent my entire time at thrift stores and
Goodwill. Wow.
No I so our niece really wanted to shop while we were there and.
(20:59):
So you went to Target. Fantastic.
Well. She's on a budget and of the
things that she could afford, drifting and good and goodwill
was the way that we needed to go.
And now she also wanted to go toTarget and try to find stuff
there and Ross and we did that. I will say good advice that we
(21:20):
got and for anyone that's going to a very expensive state, you
can buy souvenirs everywhere along any tourist street, hotel,
all that stuff. If you want to buy tourist stuff
on a budget, go to Walmart. Walmart has the same exact thing
for the half price. So I am fanning myself with this
(21:46):
fan that I bought I was holding.Up a one of those little fans,
you unfold and you look very fancy and it says Aloha and it's
all floral and everything. So you picked that up at
Walmart? Yeah, I picked it up at Walmart.
It was like 6 bucks or something.
And the thing was, it's like I didn't buy it because it was
from Hawaii. I bought it because I've been
(22:06):
wanting one of these fans and I know they sell them on Amazon,
but I'm like, I didn't need a pack of 20, I just needed one.
So I bought this one and I plan on putting it in my purse.
So the Texas summer heat ain't coming after me, son.
I got my fan on me. You.
Can bid the heat Aloha. Well, the other thing is, is
(22:27):
like stuff that I love bringing back for people from other
countries, other states is the local coffee in Hawaii has
really good coffee and also likelocal candies and stuff like
that. Go to the local grocery store
and get that stuff. You don't have to buy it at the
souvenir shop. So yeah.
So we ended up doing a lot of souvenir shopping at Walmart
because Walmart has the exact same thing as all the souvenir
(22:51):
and but for a fraction of the price.
Well, well, it sounds like it's an excellent adventure and I
don't know, like now I'm kind ofwondering, like, what other,
what other far-flung places could you, like, look into?
And I wonder if you find similarinsides.
Yeah. I have a couple more trips
(23:12):
coming up so we'll see if I can stumble upon any thrift stores
or second hand stores I can comeacross.
They're out there, they're out there.
The bigger challenge is to try to find a garage sale.
That is the bigger challenge andespecially like going to some
island nations that are third world countries.
(23:33):
They don't necessarily do secondhand sales because they don't
have abundance, but it's also like you got to do something
with stuff once it's been used, OK.
Well, here's your assignment, Julie.
Take something to barter with, take something to offer in
exchange and make it an invasivespecies.
(23:56):
I mean, usually they want to barter with cash.
But anyway, I just wanted to bring the the whole experience
of thrift shopping in Hawaii to the audience.
I'm transported. Thank you, Julie.
Thanks. Bye.
Welcome to garage sales Unhinged.
Where the characters are as quirky as the vines.
I'm Julie. And I'm Jake.
Join us as we dive into the wildworld of garage sales, yard
sales, estate sales, and anywhere second hand sales are
happening from. Bizarre bargains to hilarious
haggles. You won't believe the stories
we've got lined up. Let's get unhinged.
(00:24):
Jake, you know I love to travel.And it's not just I love to
travel. I like vacation.
I don't want to. There's a difference, yeah.
Yeah, I want. I want to travel for vacation.
I want to go somewhere and be waited on and sleep in and do
(00:44):
all the fun stuff and forget about reality.
That's what I want to do. OK, breaking news.
When's the last time you went onvacation?
Oh. It's been a while.
Yes. What's your most memorable
vacation? Well, buy me a little bit of
time while I think about that. No, we're going to sit here once
(01:10):
I have a very clear story of a vacation from our childhood
whenever we drove out to Carlsbad Caverns.
OK. We had the Astro minivan, the
Astro minivan, we had the bucketseats up in front.
Mom and dad sat in we and then we had a middle row and then we
had a third row. And to get to the third row,
(01:34):
like we would crawl over the middle road to get back to the
third row. And on our road trips, there was
always two people in the middle row and one person in the back
row. And usually that third, that
third row was our older brother.Right.
He was like, I'm, I'm a, I'm a Moody teenager, so I need to sit
(01:55):
back here with my Walkman and listen to the Guns and Roses
soundtrack. And yeah, Earth was.
Mine but yes do all that well onthese Rd. trips.
You probably listening to Extreme.
He had like, yeah, he was right.Like in retrospect, he wasn't
edgy, he was lame. Not was, is.
(02:17):
So on these Rd. trips, mom and dad came up with a new rule and
said, hey, you know, we're goingto switch out.
And so that each one of the kids, we could have access to
the third row and get a little bit of freedom.
We could stretch out. Like usually if you had the 3rd
row, you just lay down because like you're in the middle.
You got to sit up. And I remember it was my turn to
(02:39):
have the 3rd row and I'm laying down in the back.
We're driving through New Mexicodesert and I'm laying down in
the back reading one of my books.
And our dad from the driver's seat goes, Julie, you need to
sit up. And it, you know, just really
enjoy this. God's kind of, this is beautiful
out here. And I remember I sat up a little
(03:00):
bit, looked outside and I said, it's the same view I saw 10
minutes ago and laid back down. And he didn't like that I
responded like that. So I lost my privileges of the
third row. I know.
I was like, what am I supposed to do?
Just sit there and stare outside?
Or would you like me to, like, read and, like, become more
educated? Yeah.
(03:22):
Yeah. OK.
I think, I think one of mine wasa church trip to Colorado.
Like the youth group, like, oh, we're all going to go skiing and
everybody can pull their money and we're going to go skiing and
everything like that. And it's my first go at it.
And I got a boot size that was too small and it rubbed and
(03:44):
rubbed and rubbed and rubbed until it was like really bad.
And that got really bad until I got blood poisoning and I
probably almost died and I didn't know it.
And like, I think I got like medicine from someone I don't
know. And I got better and it was more
(04:06):
fun after that. But the trip up there was more
than memorable thing because youhave a, I think it was a rented
bus or something like that of about 15 people.
And our, our brother and I had at the, at the time, we were
very much into the Adult Swim show space, Ghost Coast to
(04:28):
Coast. And I had the soundtrack to
like, I had like acd of, of songs that were on the show.
And it was, they were all very annoying original songs.
They're obnoxious and annoying. And he and I were just singing
them the whole, it felt like thewhole way.
I'm sure for everybody else in the bus, it felt like it was the
whole way. And it was.
(04:48):
It was fun to be obnoxious. Maybe because you guys did that,
I don't ever want to ride in a car for that long again.
Yeah, for sure. Are you planning a garage sale,
yard sale, or estate sale and need some help?
Look no further than Garage SaleSupply.
They provide top notch resourcesand expert advice to help you
(05:11):
host the perfect sell. From pricing tips to promotional
strategies, they've got you covered.
Visit garagesalesupply.com and make your next sell at success.
Well, so today I want to talk about a recent vacation I went
on. I took our one of our nieces
(05:31):
with me and we went to Hawaii and I've been to Hawaii several
times. Beautiful state, been to some of
the islands. This time I went to the island
of Oahu and one of the things I wanted to do there was I wanted
to go to thrift stores and understand how an island
community dealt with the second hand market.
(05:53):
And it was really interesting whenever I brought this up to
some of the locals of oh, this is what I'm this one I'm
researching, this one I'm looking at.
They all had stories about the second hand market in Hawaii.
So couple places that I went to,went to the Goodwill there.
So Goodwill we've mentioned before, it's, it's almost like a
(06:14):
franchise type thing, but each individual Goodwill is its own
business. They have their own directors,
their own volunteers. This Goodwill that we went to,
Pristine, it was clean. They had a surfboard there for
$60.00 which I'm seeing was a bargain.
The clothes there were clean andorganized.
(06:38):
Their staff there were very busyre hanging things, putting stuff
up. It was it was the nicest
goodwill I've ever been to. Also looking like it's funny.
I walked through some of the home decor things at Goodwill
and they were selling 2 bags. In each bag was $5.00 but 2 bags
(07:00):
of seashells. OK.
And I felt like that was a RIP off.
I'm like all. Right.
I can just go outside and get that.
You might as well sell me a bag of leaves that fell off a tree,
you know? But I ended up I did buy a dress
from there that I can wear for work.
It was it was actually a really nice dress.
(07:22):
But yeah, it was one of those things of, again, I mentioned a
previous episode, I want to go and try to find a graphic tee
that is low, you know, has a local flare on it or something
like that. While they didn't find it at
Goodwill, it was still fun to walk around and look at
everything. And they also had really clean
dressing rooms. And like, sometimes you go into
(07:43):
a Goodwill and they don't have dressing rooms.
But this one? Drop trail right there, right?
Yeah. So we went to Goodwill.
The other place that we went to was a thrift store on Hawaii.
It was up actually at the North Shore.
And I want to say it's more of aboutique slash thrift store.
(08:04):
So some stuff the owners curatedfrom local estate sells.
Sometimes people bring things in.
She hasn't. She was saying that she doesn't
really accept donations anymore because she wants to make sure
that she's maintaining this highquality of the things that she's
selling. But she does have things from
(08:25):
local artists that are there, like jewelry and a couple print
shirts. So I actually ended up getting
one of the print shirts by a local artist there, but we were
talking to her about her space. She was in a different space
down to miles down the road. They had to move to this other
location. The other space, while it was
(08:45):
like double the size of what shecurrently has, it didn't have
any AC in it. So during the summer was really
hot and it the building needed some updating and maintenance
and so they had to move to a newlocation.
This new location that she's in,I think she had, I want to say
(09:06):
it was like 600 or 700 square feet.
So not very big for a store. She pays $10,000 a month.
Yikes 0. And that's one of the things
that she was talking about on the North Shore.
There's not a lot of thrift stores there.
And part of it is is that she said that a lot of tourists come
(09:29):
in and they see thrift store andthey think, oh, that's not good
quality stuff or, you know, theywant to buy something new or
whatever that may be. So they well, she doesn't have a
lot of competition there. It's also she's battling this
idea that second hand sells is dirty.
(09:50):
She's also battling the high rent that comes with being on an
island community. And she would love to be even
further along the main strip of the North Shore community.
But she's like, the rent just goes up.
And I, you know, she can't like if your rent's $10,000 a month,
like what do you got to bring home to also pay your other
(10:10):
bills and, you know, have life outside of that all.
Right. It's going to be really tough to
operate in a space where, you know, Zuckerberg is actively
just trying to buy the entire damn island, you know?
Yeah, there is actually one of the Hawaiian islands, the I
(10:30):
think it's the former CEO of Oracle owns 8th of the island.
Is that Ellison? I don't know.
Who cares? You know what?
It was nice when we didn't have to know the names of CE OS.
Yeah, to hell with that. I commit to not remember
anymore. There you go.
So you know, I, I went to Hawaiithinking like, oh, the second
(10:51):
hand market has to be great there because you have so many
tourists that leave things behind that they can't take with
them or like lost luggage that like now the airport like, hey,
people aren't going to pick thisup and they give it to whatever
kind of community group that cansell it.
Also being an island nation of you know shipping things there
(11:14):
very expensive and takes a long time.
I have a friend that lives thereand Kim was saying that whenever
you order a mattress, you're waiting about 3 months to get
the mattress because it has to come over on a boat.
And and like what they have there in stock is not like it
may be a few weeks worth, but it's not like we have here on
(11:35):
the mainland. But it was still interesting.
So this this thrift store slash boutique slash consignment
store, very clean, really cute stuff in it.
You have to have a vehicle to get there.
So it's not along like a touriststrand or something like that.
(11:56):
The Goodwill, lots of people in there.
We had an Uber driver, really great, nice guy.
And he was saying that the Filipino community tends to go
to the garage sales and Goodwilland stuff like that.
And they buy clothes to resell so that there's a huge resale
market, Hawaii. And I was like, oh, like they
(12:19):
sell between the islands and they said, no, they ship it to
wherever it goes in the world because as a buyer, you, you are
paying for that shipping cost. So my friend that lives there,
she was saying that some of the stuff that is now being
considered collector items is like the moo moos from the 70s
(12:40):
and the 80s. Now younger generations of
Hawaiian women are trying to find those moo moos to wear to
fancy events and all that stuff.And they, they doll them all up
with accessories and things likethat.
But it's kind of like, oh, you mean the moo moo that's in my
grandma's closet? Right.
Like that's actually a highly desired thing.
(13:01):
Yeah. Yeah.
You know, you're bringing up a couple of things I think are
really interesting. I mean, like, I, I love that you
did that, that you wouldn't checked out the scene because an
island, an island state, an island nation, like just by its
nature, like the ecosystem of stuff is much, much, much
smaller. Right.
(13:22):
So like things get recycled I guess that much quicker.
But then you also mentioned likethere's a lot more expense in
getting stuff to and from that place.
But as you're going in there andyou're looking around in
goodwill and stuff, how did the prices compare to what you'd see
(13:43):
on the mainland? Pretty good.
Like I expected them to be more expensive.
I want to say the dress I bought.
So the way that this Goodwill worked is that like they just
had signs around the the facility that was like, T-shirts
are three dollars, slacks and jeans are $5, dresses are.
(14:04):
About like standard, right? Yeah, yeah.
So I think I bought my dress for7 bucks and like, and I tried on
some other clothes, it just wasn't the right fit for me, or
I didn't like the color ones I had it on or whatever.
So yeah, I spent $7.00 on a dress that's currently at the
dry cleaners and I'll wear it atmy next business meeting.
And it looks nice. It looks fancy.
(14:25):
I found it really interesting too what you said about that
shop owner kind of trying to turn around the sentiment that
oh man, thrift is lower quality.Right.
Where but you're also mentioningthere's some people that are
going, no, no, what you actuallywant is the stuff at the thrift
shop and not anything new. And so and we talked about it
(14:50):
before kind of the standards forproduction being better in the
past because it it wasn't as youknow, mass produced.
At some point I wonder if the flip the script will flip and
the perception will be that anything new is actually low
quality. What you want is old.
(15:13):
I mean, I think there is alreadythat because she was saying, I
mean she has name brand stuff onthe racks.
She also has things that you canbuy at Target, but the things
that she curates, it's to fit the vibe that she's trying to
create for her shop. OK.
So again, she's like, yeah, there's things in here that you
(15:34):
can buy that you're going to spend 50 bucks on and it's going
to be a bargain. And then there's other things
that you can spend $5 on and it's still a bargain, but you
can buy that at Target, but you just bought it here.
I will say this too, because we did go into Target and Ross and
stuff there. People should know this, but
(15:54):
they carry like different swimsuits than what we carry
here in the mainland. They also, I've learned this
whenever I went to Key West one year.
If you ever need a sweatshirt, go to an island nation, go to a
hot zone and put sweatshirts there because you can get them
pretty cheap because those are not in high demand.
Yeah, that. Makes.
(16:15):
Sense but yeah, it was it was interesting that the Uber driver
we had he was actually a collector of comic books and
he's a reseller of comic books and I was really curious about
this. I'm going so how do you find
comic books here in Hawaii? He's like sometimes whenever
people find out that he he collects comic books, he's like,
(16:38):
I get calls all the time going, hey, we're we're emptying out my
uncle's attic. We found a box.
Do you want it? And he's like elevate.
He's like, yes, I want it. I want it.
What he also does is that he flies to the mainland, so he's
coming to Phoenix in a few months to go to a comic book
convention to either sell stuff or to buy more things.
(17:00):
And then he'll take it back for his resale business and find a
buyer or he just enjoys looking at them and he keeps it for his
own collection. But yeah, he was saying how big
of the resale market is there? He And I think also too, because
people tend to want to move to aparadise and maybe don't realize
(17:20):
how expensive it is or, you know, hey, I need to offset my
income and that type of stuff. And so they turn to reselling
items that they can buy for pennies on the dollar and then
sell it for a little bit more. And then that's how they make
some income. But also the day, so it was on
Sunday, we were going to Pearl Harbor and across the, the
(17:41):
highway, there was a massive swap meet at the Aloha Bowl, the
stadium there. And we didn't, we weren't able
to go to the swap meet. But it's kind of like, I think
they, I don't know how often they do the swap meet, but it
was one of those things of instead of having a garage sale
in your neighborhood, you can come do a booth at the swap
(18:02):
meet. And people have things that
they've created, things that they're trying to sell, you
know, collectibles, that type ofstuff.
And then my friend was telling me she's like, oh, just one
neighborhood over from where we were in Oahu, took one
neighborhood over. That's the fluent neighborhood.
And whenever there's a state sells there, people like just go
(18:23):
there and swarms and stuff. Here's the other thing, Jake,
and I know I'm talking a lot, but here's the other thing.
I looked for garage sales and estate sales through the
websites that I used to find them before I went over there.
OK. None listed.
So I don't know how they list their cells in Hawaii, if they
(18:45):
have a separate website or if they use like the local
community papers. I don't know what it is, but I
was like, man, I wish I had beenable to, like, stake it out a
little bit more and going, OK, is there going to be a good
estate sale? Because I also think of like,
old Hollywood, you know, lived in Hawaii.
Yeah, like you'll find some of Bob Hope's old stuff there, you
know? Yeah.
(19:06):
Goth clubs, come on that we goth.
Yeah, no, I'm, I'm sure like surely, right.
They've got to have some more like local way of, you know,
raising awareness that these things are going on.
Like there's probably some Facebook group or something like
that. Probably, yeah.
It's it's a small island like you just it won't take much
(19:28):
effort to find it if you just goa direction and what you see a
lot of blue stop. Well, and one of the things that
there's an app that my friend told me about that a lot of the
people in her Hawaiian communityuse, it's called Macari.
(19:50):
I know MERCARI and it's it's a reselling app type thing.
You post things up there that you would want to sell.
But she said that a lot of people that have like the moo
moos that they're trying to sell.
They post them on this app to try to find stuff, so I've never
(20:11):
heard of it. I've never used it, but it looks
like similar to a Poshmark type thing.
But yeah, it's another app that apparently the a lot of people
in Hawaii use to try to sell stuff.
Well, I, I hope, would you please try to reassure our
(20:34):
listeners that you didn't spend the entire time in Hawaii going
to thrift stores and retail shops because this, this does
not sound like much of a vacation right now.
If you were the IRSI spent my entire time at thrift stores and
Goodwill. Wow.
No I so our niece really wanted to shop while we were there and.
(20:59):
So you went to Target. Fantastic.
Well. She's on a budget and of the
things that she could afford, drifting and good and goodwill
was the way that we needed to go.
And now she also wanted to go toTarget and try to find stuff
there and Ross and we did that. I will say good advice that we
(21:20):
got and for anyone that's going to a very expensive state, you
can buy souvenirs everywhere along any tourist street, hotel,
all that stuff. If you want to buy tourist stuff
on a budget, go to Walmart. Walmart has the same exact thing
for the half price. So I am fanning myself with this
(21:46):
fan that I bought I was holding.Up a one of those little fans,
you unfold and you look very fancy and it says Aloha and it's
all floral and everything. So you picked that up at
Walmart? Yeah, I picked it up at Walmart.
It was like 6 bucks or something.
And the thing was, it's like I didn't buy it because it was
from Hawaii. I bought it because I've been
(22:06):
wanting one of these fans and I know they sell them on Amazon,
but I'm like, I didn't need a pack of 20, I just needed one.
So I bought this one and I plan on putting it in my purse.
So the Texas summer heat ain't coming after me, son.
I got my fan on me. You.
Can bid the heat Aloha. Well, the other thing is, is
(22:27):
like stuff that I love bringing back for people from other
countries, other states is the local coffee in Hawaii has
really good coffee and also likelocal candies and stuff like
that. Go to the local grocery store
and get that stuff. You don't have to buy it at the
souvenir shop. So yeah.
So we ended up doing a lot of souvenir shopping at Walmart
because Walmart has the exact same thing as all the souvenir
(22:51):
and but for a fraction of the price.
Well, well, it sounds like it's an excellent adventure and I
don't know, like now I'm kind ofwondering, like, what other,
what other far-flung places could you, like, look into?
And I wonder if you find similarinsides.
Yeah. I have a couple more trips
(23:12):
coming up so we'll see if I can stumble upon any thrift stores
or second hand stores I can comeacross.
They're out there, they're out there.
The bigger challenge is to try to find a garage sale.
That is the bigger challenge andespecially like going to some
island nations that are third world countries.
(23:33):
They don't necessarily do secondhand sales because they don't
have abundance, but it's also like you got to do something
with stuff once it's been used, OK.
Well, here's your assignment, Julie.
Take something to barter with, take something to offer in
exchange and make it an invasivespecies.
(23:56):
I mean, usually they want to barter with cash.
But anyway, I just wanted to bring the the whole experience
of thrift shopping in Hawaii to the audience.
I'm transported. Thank you, Julie.
Thanks. Bye.
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