A Toy Story

I’ve told you there are brand new finds out there in the world of thrift, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to understand the extent to which I mean brand new. Unless you’re already big on thrifting or you’re the individual throwing these awesome things out, it’s hard to wrap your brain around the concept of secondhand, brand newness.  It sounds like a contradiction, right? But it isn’t and I have proof!

My boyfriend, Johnathan, and I have child at heart syndrome. We still have way too much fun digging through the toy bins at every store.  The cool thing about being adults is that we don’t have to beg mom to get them and plenty of our friends have little ones, which means we get to use their babies as an excuse for getting the toys we really, really want.

Johnathan is worse with the toy temptation than I am, but he’s an artist and cartoonist so he has an even more legit explanation for his failure to abandon toys at thirteen, like you “normal” people do.  And I’m so very happy he didn’t because most of his thrift finds are incredible. One buy of his that completely blew my mind is from the new Toy Story 3 collection. Last month, while we were thrifting in Minneapolis, he found the talking Woody doll. So, when you find an item like this you pick it up and immediately start thinking: Kid broke it already; bet the thing doesn’t talk. But once Johnathan pulled the string and a loud and clear, “There’s a snake in my boot!” resounded, I knew he was sold. We inspected Woody more than once, and there is not a scratch on him. He’s missing his hat, but Woody momentarily lost his hat in the movie, anyway. Realism; our doll stays in character. Same week, Johnathan found a Rex the Dinosaur— the neat, new one with the plush body and plastic head. Once again, he is in perfect condition!

 What makes these Toy Story 3 finds so amazing is: 1) They are insanely new to already be on thrift store shelves (you would think) 2) Johnathan bought these items for $2.00 each! That’s crazy considering the talking Woody doll is $40.00 in stores right now, while Rex is $25.00- $19.00

We have also found working Buzz Lightyear wings, which we didn’t get because the kids we know are still too young for such toys; getting whacked in the face with a plastic wing is not a good deal. I even found the Jessie doll, but Johnathan acted like a typical boy and decided he didn’t need a girl in his Toy Story gift collection. I assured him a one-year-old boy would be perfectly fine with a Jessie doll, but he stayed skeptical.

Toy Story 3 is about as brand new as brand new gets. These toys haven’t even reached discount in stores yet, due to newness and popularity, and here we are, finding them for near-to-nothing in thrift stores. How awesome is that? Did you ever find a brand new thrift item that made you blink twice? I’d love to hear about it!