Goodwill Industries of Columbia Willamette covers Northwest Oregon and Southwest Washington, extends to Battleground, Wash., and the Oregon Coast, then to Bend in Central Oregon, Emanuel explains.Įach Goodwill system is independent, and each is given its own territory and a lot of leeway in how it does business. Goodwill reports that total online transactions from this particular center in 2011 generated more than $4 million in sales. “The highest price we can get is the best price we can get, because we help the most people that way,” Emanuel said. Listed items are meticulously cataloged and fill several aisles of shelves that can house up to 20,000 items as they are being bid on.īut some items, like antique muskets, are considered specialty items with a guaranteed customer base willing to pay the assessed price. Just this week, two watches were donated that we haven’t had authenticated yet, but if they’re authentic they’ll be worth certainly many hundreds if not thousands of dollars,” Peterson said. “I’ve been here for five weeks, and there have been two paintings that were to customers worth more than $4,000 each. Last week, the e-commerce site had on display a beaver fur top hat that dated back to the mid-19th century, as well as vintage World War II editions of The Eugene Register-Guard.Į-Commerce Operations Manager Joshua Peterson said that receiving big-ticket items isn’t terribly rare. After it was authenticated, the piece - “Summer of 1909” - sold for $165,000 online. The Frank Weston Benson watercolor was dated 1926. In fact, a 2006 painting at this very center set records for most expensive donation. Sorters at each retail store are trained to filter out potentially valuable merchandise. Whether through carelessness or bulk estate donations, items of great historic and monetary value sometimes slip into the Goodwill system. The set generally retails for $90, Drabik said his winning bid was $30. It’s a popular option for people like Beaverton resident Chris Drabik, who was at the checkout counter early last week to pick up an Erector Set for his son. While the average Goodwill retail store customer is female, Emanuel said, they’ve found that there’s a 50/50 gender split on .įor locals, there’s the option to bypass shipping fees and pick up the merchandise themselves. The best-selling items among the site’s 850,000 active bidders are jewelry, instruments and art, and the average item sale price is around $34. Bidding is open for seven days, and items are then sent out from the on-site shipping center. The online store posts an average of 400 new items daily.Īccording to Emanuel, 98 percent of listed items start with an opening bid of $5. is part researcher, part appraiser of everyday objects, and each lister aims to process 60 pieces of merchandise in a day. Fish and Wildlife guidelines, as well as Washington and Oregon departments of fish and wildlife criteria, to ensure Goodwill is not reselling anything that was illegally hunted or poached. Donated game by law has to be checked against U.S. Certain items, like these, bypass the retail stores completely, often because the items require research into their legitimacy or legality. The job descriptionA few containers line the wall, one with moose antlers and mounted taxidermy deer heads poking out. The second baler packs unsold stuffed animals into shrunk-wrapped units that are similarly salvaged and resold.Īt a cluster of workstations in the next room, “listers” process carts full of items deemed appropriate for the online store. Last year, this center estimates it process 5.2 million pounds of remnant textiles this way.
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