There are some near enough that I can hit them on my lunch break when I work at the office, or stop by one on the way to get groceries. And I still find good stuff occasionally.
The good days aren't gone. The good days for vinyl are gone. You need to be looking for what others don't care about. In the '90s, you could do well with vinyl at thrifts, but CDs were garbage. Now it's reversed. You need to get in front of trends, not follow them. Every fleabag flipper on earth can (and does) follow trends. They are all searching for vinyl now. Unless you don't have a job, you aren't possibly going to beat them at that game. Find something else if you're going to be scouring the thrifts. Or give up your job and become a fleabag flipper with them.
Around last Christmas I happened to be lucky one day and was at the store right as an employee put out several bins of LPs. Mostly still typical stuff but I got an original press of an avant garde jazz record.
I haven't found much in the last couple months, I've been trying to watch for copies of Vivaldi's Four Seasons to add to my collection but the last 4 copies I've found looked like they had been used as hockey pucks. I would have thought classical music listeners would be a little more careful but I guess everybody has trouble keeping discs in the cases.
I’m going to start hanging around graveyards. Sorry for your loss. What were the deceased’s favourite records?
The one Goodwill store near me hasn't had any vinyl or CD's on the shelves at all for a while now. It's all DVD's.
Just noticed something strange recently, I went back a couple of times and almost all the rock albums there were just the cover, with no records inside. It's not like someone would want to steal "BTO Greatest Hits" without the cover (?) I wonder what that is all about
I'm figuring in ten years or so there's going to be a ton of stuff from various collector markets flooding the market: records, HiFi, cars, all kinds of stuff.
I used to go to a local City Mission store. Found some very poor condition Beatles albums for 50 cents each. Then I found David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust, BTO - Not Fragile, Alice Cooper - Schools Out, and a few other 70s rock albums all in fair condition. My favorite was Jethro Tull's Thick As a Brick. I'm not crazy about the album, but it had the entire newspaper foldout, and nobody filled in the puzzles!
90% of the time I come out of Goodwill with nada. But not always. Pick ups from local Goodwill stores over the last three to six months or so, all $2 each: The Sons Of The Pioneers - Cool Water (And Seventeen Timeless Western Favorites) and Schubert / Juilliard String Quartet - Death And The Maiden Records in surprisingly good condition, but sleeves in great shape, and I really like the cover illustrations. Bob Dylan - Live 1975 (The Rolling Thunder Revue) . Included the booklet, and the DVD, still sealed. CD's in great shape. Roxy Music - Viva! The Live Roxy Music Album , The Allman Brothers Band - Brothers And Sisters , and The Cars - Shake It Up . All three in very good condition. In with a batch of other other seventies eighties albums that were sadly scratched to hell. Just happened to be there when a fresh box of albums hit the floor. Bruce Springsteen - Born In The U.S.A. and Heart - Little Queen last weekend. Already have both of these (or similar pressing), but picked up 'em up anyways, to give away, since they were in nice condition.
Through the years, I've some gems. Definitely slowed down. I'll go a long time, finding nothing, then luck into a nice 'find',, which keeps me checking another 6 months...
A while back in my local GW a young man was furiously pulling CDs from the shelves. His girlfriend got pissed at him and donated his collection and he was buying back what he could.
Things like that happen quite frequently apparently. You can appeal to the store manager/owner, explain your situation and get the item(s) back at no or little cost sometimes. Because these items are donated there is little financial investment involved.
I used to find empty covers in my relatives' collections from the 60's sometimes. It happened the first time I saw Aftermath and Magical Mystery Tour I think.
I thought the original Iron Maiden CDs were the ones to buy. They rarely turn up at charity shops here in the UK.
Earlier this year, I stopped by a few charity shops in the outskirts of Derby, England. I found some metal/hard rock CDs. Lee Aaron - Metal Queen Vow Wow - Helter Skelter Poison - Look What The Cat Dragged In G-Force - G-Force