UKH

What would you do?

A set of Miyabi knives in the local charity shop. Goodness knows why, but six of them. Used, but pretty much perfect.

They are tagged at £30 for the six.

However, they are the 7000 MCDs. So worth perhaps £300 each.

They've kindly put them aside for Monday.

What should I pay?

In reply to JJL:

£31, quick, before someone gives them the £30 they're asking for.

In reply to JJL:

Tell em how much they're worth, they're only knives after all. Let some other bugger give a grand to charity for some pointy bits of metal.

In reply to JJL:

I would give them £30 and run for the hills.

In reply to JJL:

Are you going to use them?

Or sell them and pocket the difference.

They're only worth what someone walking past that shop will pay for them. Regardless what they're worth new.

In reply to JJL:


Tell them you only need 5 of the knives.
Negotiate them down to £25.
They'll probably throw in knife number 6 for free

In reply to JJL:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IBH97ma9YiI#

Phew for a minute there!

In reply to JJL:

Buy them, stick em on eBay then donate whatever you get?

In reply to Cheese Monkey:

Yeah, I was going to say similar - Do you want them for your own use? or to re-sell?

Either way, buy them for the £30 and then donate money to the charity to better reflect what you actually find they are worth to you (or a proportion of what you sell them for)

In reply to JJL:

Which charity shop and where would that be ?

In reply to Moley:


Probably Durness, Highlands, only 600 miles from London.

Also, OP, they're worth 300 quid, but isn't that the new cost? Not secondhand? Sorry to quibble...

In reply to JJL:

Are they the real deal or knock offs ? If your gonna use them just buy them and enjoy them.surely charity shops have discovered google by now and must check things out before pricing them ? Or do they just guess,if you're really struggling pay them what you think they're worth or forget about them and let someone else have them.

In reply to JJL:
The charity shops now pretty much have experts that go round the various branches before anything of likely value is sold .

I have questioned items in the past in Charity Shops, advising them if item looks underpriced, and they have then either researched it there and then, or taken it off display awaiting their appraiser. Mostly they send these items to auction.

In reply to JJL:

Buy them, stick them on ebay, split the profit with the charity shop.

If you plan to use them them donate an amount above the asking price at your own discretion

In reply to JJL: That is less of a debating point than why they're £300 each. Jesus.

In answer to the question, do what you can live with.

In reply to Jim C:


I have a friend who managed the book sales for a region of Oxfam. When the charity was just becoming savvy about first editions etc , she had books priced by an expert, and the choice books were displayed in a locked cabinet.

The following week, she visited a branch to see if the new sales regime was working. One of the elderly ladies who volunteered in the shop came up to her, proud as punch, to tell her the good news that she'd 'sold one of the books in the glass case'. It transpired that, although it was priced at 50 pounds, she'd sold it for 50p,

In reply to abseil:

They're around £600 new.

I would be using them myself.

I'm going to tell them to ebay them.

I can't rip little old ladies off

In reply to JJL:


Thanks for your reply, wow, 600 quid for a knife?! That's how the other half live I suppose, buying them new - I'd love to see Mrs. Abseil's face if I bought one and told her the price ... she might suddenly get good at knife throwing ha-ha.

Good for you with the shop, though.

In reply to JJL:
Not sure they should even be selling them due to the rules/laws regarding knives. I know when I was managing a charity shop, we weren't allowed to sell knives of any description- not even butter knives

In reply to RockAngel: as long as they sell them to adults, why would it be a problem? People have to buy knives somewhere?

In reply to JJL:


Good idea and good for you for doing the right thing.

It would be interesting to know the history of them though. Why would anyone have six of them and then give them away presumably oblivious of their value? I had no idea knives could cost so much. Makes think of the swords in Kill Bill.

In reply to JJL:

I bought a £350 jacket from a charity shop for £40. Does that make me a bad person?

In reply to Yanis Nayu:

I think some charity shops are popular partly because you can find an odd bargain. That's probably the reason why I used to visit them rather frequently yet I would usually buy something that wasn't my aim.

In reply to JJL:

If you need them then buy them at 30 quid. If you're just going to sell them for a profit then do so and donate half (or more). Fair compromise, no?

I return karma from obvious bargains at charity shops by regularly taking donations of clothes/books etc in.

In reply to ceri:
Cancer research uk- company policy was not to sell any knives that were donated. Weren't allowed to sell cycling/motorcycle helmets, car seats and a few other things as we couldn't guarantee that they hadn't been damaged due to an accident and were not 100% safe and therefore the blame of cancer research uk if something went wrong with that item. Knives, in the wrong hands, could potentially cause a hell of a lot of damage, so we weren't allowed to sell them

In reply to RockAngel:

The Mind shop I volunteered in had a similar policy.

In reply to RockAngel:

"Knives, in the wrong hands, could potentially cause a hell of a lot of damage"
so could a cricket bat or cord out of a dressing gown, would you stop selling dressing gowns because someone could strangle someone with the cord, or stop selling sports equipment because someone could bash someone's head in?

So long as the shop asks for proof of age to make sure they aren't breaking the law then there shouldn't be a problem. No shop can be expected to run full CRB and psychological checks on their customers.

In reply to gethin_allen:
Exactly! Totally agree about not selling 2nd hand ppe like helmets, but I do think not selling knives is just silly.

In reply to JJL:

I would just buy them to be honest. I'm sure charity shops google stuff to see what it's worth, and if they haven't they should.

I was at work the other day with a stinking headache, so I went for a walk and some fresh air. It was hammering down with rain. I walked past the Oxfam shop and saw out the corner of my eye a book on watercolour painting. I popped in and had a look. It was a good book, priced at £2.99. I fished in my pocket and found I had exactly £3. I approached the counter and told the lady at the counter about my serendipitous discovery, including the fact that I had exactly £3. "Would you like a bag?" she asked. "Yes please," replied I "it's battering down out there!". "That's 5p" she said. Of course I replied that I only had a penny. "Oh, too bad..." she said. I walked out with it stuffed under my jacket. I think the moral of this little tale is this - f*ck'em.

In reply to JJL:






Because no one ever gets ripped off selling on eBay.

This is ridiculous, it's not about the value of the item, it's about the cash to them at that moment - not three or four days later once you've announced your good intentions to UKC. If they were buying stock and losing money from not understanding it then that's one thing. If you give them £50 for them and tell you friends you bought them at a bargain in their shop they'll visit too. Net result more cash.

Instead they'll start doubting themselves at every object. They'll worry about underselling and less will be sold. The older generation who volunteer in these shops and who are less likely to be au fait with eBay and the like will become disenfranchised, not understanding what they should be doing.

You may have started a chain reaction that crashes the charity shop system - the last thing holding together 80% of the high streets. Without them it's just betting shops and mobile phones outlets.

In reply to Philip:

His local high street will collapse and it'll be ALL HIS FAULT you mean?

In reply to Yanis Nayu:


Only you can answer that........

In reply to JJL:

Id ask if they'd take £25.

In reply to gethin_allen:
It wasn't my decision! It was the charity shop policy across the country! And to be fair, most people use dressing gown belts to do their dressing gown up and cricket bats to play cricket, but knives, by their own definition are used for cutting and stabbing things! Not only that, but the majority of volunteers in charity shops are little old ladies who probably wouldn't think to ask for proof of age. What if it was on a shelf/locked display cabinet and some stupid idiot picked it up to look at it and ran their finger along the blade to test it's sharpness and cut themselves? It would be the shops fault for putting a sharp blade on the shelf, not the stupid idiots fault for running his/her finger on the blade.

In reply to Philip:

Wow.

Let me get this clear. You say that, because I didn't have £30 on me at the time, and felt the item is worth more, it'll turn the High Street into a napalmed-wilderness of Estate Agents and coffee shops? That a major charity is so hand to mouth with cash that waiting until Monday will do them in? Yet you view *my* action as "ridiculous"?

I suspect they actually use the local auction rooms periodically. That would be the best place for this box, and I would bid.

Back under your bridge please!

In reply to Oogachooga:



I don't *need* them - I have some knives; quite good ones at that. But then, it's unlikely that anyone will *need* them.

They are beautiful though:
http://royaldesign.co.uk/viewitem.aspx?ID=81730&utm_source=google&u...

In reply to JJL:

The purpose of a charity shop is to make money for charity. That's why they're there. An added benefit of selling second hand goods is that people get some good deals and old things are reused. I think there is generally a tangible difference between getting a deal and ripping them off. Whilst I'm sure there is a grey area, in this case it seems pretty clear.

In reply to JJL:

Can't quite understand why this is even an issue.

People need to stop thinking of charities as these quaint little places staffed by volunteers in there 70's dressed in pinny's while attaching 25 pence or maybe 50 pence price labels to donated stock while gossiping about Winifred's blue rinse and if to offer 1 or 2 biscuits at the Sunday church fund raiser

BECAUSE

The last time I looked lots of charity boss's where being paid 6 figure salaries along with support staff on wages that many could only dream of. Donations that run into 100's of millions etc etc you get the point.

I also seem to remember cases where people have accidentally donated things only to have to go to court to get the valuable items back.

Charities are business just like Tesco or Amazon don't feel bad in the slightest at getting a bargain!

In reply to JJL:

But them, use them and enjoy them. You'll never get the opportunity again.

If you feel bad, then either give them a top-up donation of cash or your old knives.

I've bought a brand new Lowe Alpine windstopper fleece in a charity shop for about £10 before - it still had the tags in it. Equally, I've pointed out a pair of jeans that were on sale for about the same and worth over £200 new. I bought a pair of unused SPD shoes and stuck them on ebay when they proved to be too big for me. I don't feel bad about any of these things and hadn't given them a second thought until now.

In reply to Indy:

Actually, that model of charity shops is still fairly accurate in most cases, despite the efforts of many charities to update things. They bring in unrestricted funding, which is what allows all of those overpaid central staff to exist (ie the thing that makes the large charities dramatically more efficient and effective than a medium-sized organisation), and which also funds the less glamorous or publicly appealing work of many organisations.

The very large sums that fund global organisations tend to come from large grants and donations that are spent with strict conditions and monitoring and on specific pieces of work.

So in general your point is valid - it's OK to think of charities as businesses who need to make a case for the value of their work, encourage donations and make sure that their operations are well run. But in the case of a local shop, you may well be dealing with volunteers in their 70s lacking in aggressive retail experience. One thing that large charities can't magic out of thin air is willing and skilled volunteers. Doesn't mean you owe them anything, of course.

In reply to JJL:

Quoting Indy:

>...

You wouldn't be asking this if it was on sale in your local cook shop.

Ethics aside, the charity shop is still a business and will have made £30 more than if someone hadn't donated a set of knives.

In reply to LastBoyScout:

I've bought a brand new Lowe Alpine windstopper fleece in a charity shop for about £10 before - it still had the tags in it. Equally, I've pointed out a pair of jeans that were on sale for about the same and worth over £200 new.

I assume you didn't buy the jeans then...

In reply to JJL:

Buy them for the price asked. Make a donation to the charity, whatever you feel is appropriate. Simple really!

In reply to JJL:

I hope someone else has bought them, rendering this whole debate pointless!

Stike while the iron is hot