And by "dirty," I mean "NSFW."

There's a marketing mastermind at Granny's Attic thrift store on Vashon Island in Washington state. Instead of tossing out** all the risqué donations the store receives, they instead save the (good/sellable) items for a once-a-year sale for adults 18 and over. I vacation in Vashon and got to experience it for myself.

(**I'm assuming that's what thrift stores normally do.)

The preview for this "After Dark" sale was held on the island's popular First Friday evening:

"Find Out What Your Neighbors Have Been Up To":

Outside the shop's actual storefront was this large tent which held all the salacious secondhand goods:

Now, I've often thought that you can tell a lot about what a community is about by what ends up in their thrift stores, a sort of anthropological study. What would I learn about the denizens of Vashon? Only one way to find out...

(By the way, my 14-year-old was MORTIFIED that I was going to check the sale out and literally crossed the street and hid while I went inside.)

Walking past the "It's scandalous in here..." sign and into the tent, I immediately spotted racks of used (and presumably laundered) lingerie and books:

Turning around, I saw this table (click image to embiggen):

And this one (click image to embiggen): No comment on those pantyhose dolls.

Many artists live in Vashon, so it makes sense to me that a bunch of tasteful nude sketches ended up in the sale:

Oh, it's worth mentioning that everything was priced to move. Read the rest

Someone dropped donated a live mortar shell to Goodwill in Placerville, Califonia. While the shell, thought to be leftover from World War II, would likely have fetched more than the usual bric-à-brac on offer, the organization is clear that they don't accept donations of live ammunition. From CBS Sacramento:

Goodwill says people often drop off items in boxes that haven’t been looked through, and sometimes the donations are from a deceased war veteran...

“As we sort through those things we often find war memorabilia, grenades, it’s rare that we find a live grenade or any live ammunition, but when we do we have protocols in place to make sure that we dispose of it safely,” said Richard Abrusci, President and CEO of Goodwill Sacramento.

In the case of this potentially explosive mortar, the bomb squad came in to take it away and disposed of it at Travis Air Force Base.

A shopper at a Habitat for Humanity ReStore thrift shop in Queens, New York bought a pencil drawing that turned out to be a previously unknown piece by Austrian expressionist painter Egon Schiele (1890-1918). Jane Kallir, director of New York's Galerie St. Etienne and author of Schiele: The Complete Works, authenticated the work. From The Art Newspaper:

Kallir described the (owner) as a part-time art handler who often visits second-hand shops. “He’s got some art background—an eye,” she says. He prefers to remain anonymous, Galerie St Etienne says, and so was unavailable for an interview...

She estimates that the drawing, which is now for sale through the gallery, is worth roughly $100,000 to $200,000. It is currently on view there in an exhibition titled The Art Dealer as Scholar...

If and when the drawing is sold, the gallery says that its owner plans to donate some of the proceeds to Habitat for Humanity, a non-profit organisation that builds and repairs homes for people in need.

Talia Rappa and Skyler Ashworth spotted a nondescript box at a Florida thrift store's going-out-of-business sale. They found five NASA flight suits, worth tens of thousands of dollars, and paid just $1.20 for the lot. Read the rest

Snazzy Labs built a startlingly powerful Mac with only $70—editing the video above on it to prove it! Read the rest

Tonky sends us "Sweater Bender: A minutelong film about one Wisconsin man's love of St. Vincent De Paul and of used sweaters."

Sweater Bender

(Thanks, Tonky!) Read the rest