Friday, December 28, 2018

More... Curious Donations

UPDATE to my collection of curious donations to the thrift store.

The two books, below, represents the most baffling donation yet: 
a whole box of broken, deteriorated old paperback bestsellers, some of them nibbled along the edges, each one individually wrapped in a tied plastic bag.

Beat-up book donation are common enough, like this Reader's Digest compilation below, but they've never before come wrapped.
Vintage Reader's Digest Condensed books like this one ^ (abridged popular works published from 1950–1997)) have beautiful covers. 
I put them out––the intact ones––for 33 cents, thinking someone might want to make book art with them.
Or, who knows, . . . read them?

Another donation with a handwritten note, below––
I love these (and I love this camel)––explaining that this German Christmas decoration came "from Aunt Caroline and Uncle Herman", and in "2008, at this date, object must be over 140 years old."


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I'm going to stop noting unintentional food donations after this entry (unless it's unusual). It's all much the same: 
Someone was packing up after a garage sale or a move and left half-eaten food in with their donations, like this corner of pizza, below.
(Funny how it's color coordinated with the objects.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmm, books individually wrapped in plastic bags -- have no idea what to think of that. Perhaps they hoped they would go up in value over time. I like that they are marked low so that they may bring something to SVDP.

But the camel is so cool! I can't believe someone would give it up unless it didn't have much meaning to them.

I blame the minimalist movement for some of this - the ones who claim they only have 100 items. Boring, boring, boring.

Kirsten

Frex said...

Hi, Kirsten:
Yes, the wrapped books were the most psychologically baffling donations I've encountered yet.

I added a second photo of one so it's clear how very broken they were--mostly all the pages had come loose...
Not even sure how that happened so uniformly.
Makes me think of the X-Files!

The care given to this one little camel makes me think the donor loved it, eh? I would bet the camel came from an old person who had to get rid of their possessions––reluctantly... to move to a smaller place, perhaps?

Forced Minimalism!
I suppose minimalism is a reaction against the gross materialism of our age, but it can be, as you say, not a very interesting one, to those of us who love things:
Good things are good!