I think not!
You know my passion for dinnerware. I love plates. I love bowls. I love tea cups and mugs and platters and serving dishes. I love it all! It helps our budget that I've stuck with the same patterns that I chose 35 years ago.
But pieces get chipped, broken and crackled. And my dinner parties get larger and larger. So, from time to time, I need to replace items or acquire additional pieces to expand our entertaining capability.
I could buy individual pieces through a traditional retail store, department and discount stores, shop vintage resale stores, or,
keep my eyes and mind open to bargain opportunities in thrift stores!
To give you a ballpark on the dinnerware savings I typically find in thrift stores:
- a soup/cereal bowl in Johnson Bros. Friendly Village pattern (the one I use fall and winter) retails, full price, for $12.50
- same soup/cereal bowl can be found on Amazon or in Marshall's for $6.99 to $9.99 -- good, yes?
- shopping the vintage resale places in our neighboring vintage district, I can find these bowls for about $5 to $6 each, better,
- or best (short of someone out right giving me what I need), the same soup/cereal bowl in Goodwill for $1.99
I realize that there's a bit of an ICK-factor with some things from thrift stores. But with dishes -- they go into the dishwasher and get sanitized in my own home, to my specifications, before I even use them. Think about it, you eat with forks, bowls, plates, glasses, mugs that have been used by complete strangers, every single time you eat in a restaurant! And you have no control, whatsoever, as to the cleaning and sanitizing of restaurant dinnerware. That's a pretty good argument against any case of cooties I imagine that I'll contract, by buying thrift store dinnerware, don't you think?
Now, you wanna see the dinnerware that I bought in August and September at my local thrift stores? Here it all is:
4 bread and butter plates, 5 soup/cereal bowls, 1 salad plate, 2 fruit saucers, 2 mugs and 1 tea cup. I paid between 99 cents and $1.99 per piece, spending a total of $25.93. All of these pieces, combined, retail for over $200.00, full price. My savings, by buying my dishes at thrift stores this summer, instead of shopping retail stores, was 87.5% off of retail prices! Woo hoo!!!
So, there is a drawback to thrift shopping for dinnerware. I can't just walk into any thrift store and expect to find pieces in my pattern. Many times, I scour the dinnerware section, and come up empty-handed. But I do know that eventually the dinnerware that I'm looking for, will show up. And I buy the pieces that interest me, then.
Just another feather for my warm and cozy nest!
An FYI -- when thrifting, I came across a lot of Christmas items. Now would be a very good time to check your local thrift stores for those Christmas-themed gifts or dinnerware, while everyone else is focusing on Hallowe'en and autumn.
