Over the past couple years, Goodwill has begun to take notice of the skyrocketing value of the stock they hold . Whether they found out through Instagram bin photos, talking with customers, seeing more people shop for clothes or just from browsing eBay, Goodwill is starting to cherry pick Vintage items for their online eBay stores. The worst part is that these items never even made it to the racks. No one ever had a chance to purchase them in the first place. At the end of the day, Goodwill is not the company you may think it is, and is taking new steps to ensure they retain maximum profit despite their non-profit status.

Currently only roughly 1/8th of the company’s profits goes to charity work as detailed in a 2016 piece for Nonprofit Quarterly. The fact that a company like Goodwill has charitable status doesn’t necessarily mean that they are all about charity. In fact, their sold listings on eBay would say otherwise.

We spoke with @unalteredpast, who was able to interview the Manager of marketing and external affairs for the Connecticut chapter of Goodwill. This is a summary of the information from that interview:

“So first off, Goodwill is not a company looking to supply people in need with clothing. Their main goal is to expand and get people jobs and they use a lot of that revenue from thrift store to run those operations. Although they are a non-profit company they want your money and will do what it takes to make more money.

Prior to contrary belief, Goodwill does not care about resellers. However, they do want to become their own reseller in a sense. They know resellers are going to their stores and are buying items to resell online. So Goodwill can just cherry pick items from the donation centers and send them off to their online eBay stores so that they can charge full resell prices. This is also why in store prices are rising and why most Goodwill stores are starting their own eBay pages.

Some may notice that vintage may be harder to find than it used to be at the racks. Goodwill is hiring people to hand pick items, and of course they cannot get every piece of vintage, they’re definitely only going to get better at picking. “

So what does this mean for Vintage? Like many things its going to inevitably get harder to source. That doesn’t mean it will be impossible, but it may get there someday. The best course of action is to have a diversified portfolio of picking. If you only source from thrift stores, look into garage sales, estate sales, flea markets, etc. Having multiple streams to source from will be your best bet as more people try to enter the game. At some point, Goodwill is going to catch up and start getting hip to all the vintage worth selling, and that’s a future we have to prepare for.

What are your thoughts on this? Let us know in the comments!