The Salvation Army: Serving Families and Collectors – WorthPoint

In the vintage community, the range of interests seems nearly endless. Thrifters and pickers sometimes share good locations or videos of their “hauls,” and many collectors have formed clubs and meet-up groups to foster connections between collectors.

One of the most well-known places to source vintage items or other collectibles is The Salvation Army. The organization maintains hundreds of stores across the United States to sell goods that come in as donations. It’s a huge process to move thousands of items from donation centers to store shelves, but only some of what they receive sells in a brick-and-mortar location.

The Salvation Army also has an eBay platform on which it lists many of its higher-end donations. WorthPoint spoke with Eric Rader, the Salvation Army’s E-Commerce Director, who explained the process of sorting donations at its distribution centers and how it has partnered with WorthPoint to identify and value items that come into its stores. The WorthPoint Price Guide contains information on over 845 million items sold on various auction platforms that partner with vintage and antique websites, and it turns out The Salvation Army uses it to help them meet their goals.

WorthPoint: Thank you, Eric, for talking with us today. Can you tell us how the Salvation Army came to work with WorthPoint?

Eric Rader: Sure, of course. I was at an estate sale, and Will Seippel, the CEO, was also there. There was a selection of belt buckles for sale, and we talked about them. He told me about the Price Guide and how to check WorthPoint for recent selling prices. The conversation evolved into vintage selling platforms and the collector community, so I invited him to tour one of our distribution centers, where we sort donations. We like to think of it as seeing Santa’s Workshop at the North Pole, and Will was keen to check us out.

WP: What a great opportunity. Did you two come across anything else?

ER: Will has a sixth sense about vintage items and spotted a case in our $20 bin. Our staff opened it, and it turned out to contain a French horn that we were able to sell for $450. From then on, we knew collaborating with WorthPoint and their team would benefit our organization.

WP: How does the Salvation Army use WorthPoint?

ER: We use it hundreds of times a day. At our Adult Rehabilitation Centers (ARC), we work with people who need help, whether with addiction recovery, job training, food security, or other services we can offer. Many of these people are involved in sorting out our donations. We have iPads equipped with the WorthPoint app, and we train our workers to look up an item using the visual search within the WorthPoint app or sometimes a Google Lens search to identify items and then research the latest data on selling prices and demand. We also use the Dictionary feature and the Marks Guide when unsure of a particular item or need information on its history.

In particular, I remember a scoop that we found inside a vintage doctor’s bag. We were unsure if it was a medical instrument or a food scoop since it had a small saw as part of the mechanism. With the help of WorthPoint, we were able to find and identify a patent number. That’s just one of the items that, without WorthPoint, we never could have known anything about it. We wound up selling it for about $4,800 as it was a very rare item and the only one to come up for sale in about fifteen years.

WP: That’s an excellent outcome for your organization.

ER: It’s just one of many. We also came across a painting we believed might be authentic, but we needed clarification. The artist was Jacob Lawrence, a painter known for his unique style. One appraiser told us it was not authentic, but even though experts could not certify it as genuine, Will advised us that it could still sell for quite a bit as an inspired piece. It sold quickly, helping our mission tremendously. Our ability to identify higher-value items has increased 1,000fold since we began using WorthPoint’s tools.

WP: Can you talk a bit about why your organization shuttles some goods to your stores, and some to your e-commerce platforms?

ER: Sure. We know that sometimes people think that our pickers, or as we may refer to them, our “Procurement Specialists,” are constantly looking to scoop up the “good stuff” in a greedy way, but it isn’t that at all. Our stores strive to have 90-95% of our items priced at $4.99 or less. That’s because we know families need coats, hats, shoes, and housewares, and we want those items to be available. However, higher-end vintage items that we come across and sell for more on our online platforms allow us to offer a variety of more extensive programming to those we serve.

Also, with sometimes more than 14,000 items coming in per day, we don’t catch all the higher-end items; it’s just not possible, so our stores are still a good place for vintage fans to find some treasures.

WP: How do you feel WorthPoint has helped properly sort and categorize the thousands of items that come in as donations?

ER: We have learned that there is so much out there. When people clean out a home or get rid of items, they sometimes don’t know what they don’t know. Pretty much everything is worth something to someone, but when it’s time to sell those items, it’s essential to have the right pieces in the right venue to maximize what we can bring in to help us complete the mission of the Salvation Army. Data is the key to that, and we have found that WorthPoint is the best source for the data we need.

There are hundreds of Salvation Army Thrift stores in the United States, and items are added to the shelves daily. Shoppers who want to check out clothing and housewares will find plenty of bargains, and with the WorthPoint app, they can check out pieces to learn more about that set of dishes or handbag.

Rader concluded our interview by saying, “We’re here to serve those in need, but we also hope that shoppers in our stores feel the thrill of the hunt and come across a find now and then.”

Brenda Kelley Kim lives in the Boston area. She is the author of Sink or Swim: Tales From the Deep End of Everywhere and writes a weekly syndicated column for The Marblehead Weekly News/Essex Media Group. When not writing or walking her snorty pug, Penny, she enjoys yard sales, flea markets, and badminton.

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