Thrifty young people into old things
Over the last year, many vintage items have disappeared from thrift store shelves, only to pop up on Facebook Marketplace and Instagram.
Phil Leblanc is a recent graduate of Memorial University’s School of Medicine. He’s found thrift store shopping therapeutic for years.
“For me, going thrifting is almost like a form of meditation, in a way it’s like my yoga,” he said. “After school, I would go to Value Village, Salvation Army and other thrift stores and it would allow me to kind of clear my head for a moment.”
He especially likes mid-century modern items that originate from the 1940s into the 1960s. When he goes thrifting, he finds himself looking for certain details that fit the aesthetic of that period.
His interest in thrifting started when he was younger; he wanted to have some of the nicer things in life but didn’t have a lot of money. What he did have, however, was time. His best advice for new thrifters? If you take the time to look, pieces can be found at reasonable prices.
“If you have some time, you can actually find nice things,” he says.
He searches store shelves for different patterns and shapes that he recognizes from the era. He also uses an app called Google Lens, which allows him to take a photo of an item with his phone and search the internet for it to learn more about it.
“You can find information on the designer and again an idea for what it’s worth and stuff like that, so cellphones have really changed the game in that respect,” Phil said.
In Halifax, Lacey Leblanc, who is not related to Phil, is also a regular thrift store shopper, frequenting shops like Value Village and Mission Mart.
She’s collected some vintage furniture, including a china cabinet, her bed and a dresser, among other things. While she doesn’t wear vintage clothes as often as she once did, she still finds a lot of her clothes in thrift stores.
“I did have a good amount of vintage clothes, but I found after a while that vintage is not always comfortable. Even still, 99 per cent of my wardrobe is thrifted clothes,” she says.
She also has a collection of vintage teacups that were passed down to her from her grandmother that is displayed in an antique china cabinet. Among other items in her collection are a vintage trunk and suitcase.
Lacey loves the look of the older items in her home.
“I like the contrast between the old and new decor,” she said. “I really find the teacups pretty.”
As an early childhood educator, she also shops for her classroom at thrift stores. She has a vintage desk and a dollhouse for the children to play with and often goes looking for more toys for her students.
But vintage items in some thrift stores, at least in the St. John’s area, are starting to become more scarce, says Phil.
“The thrift stores now, are pillaged,” Phil said. “I haven’t gone in months because every time I go, they’re really picked clean.”
He speculates many people are picking up anything vintage to resell at a higher price online.
“If you have some time, you can actually find nice things.” Phil Leblanc
EXPLOSION OF VINTAGE STORES ON INSTAGRAM
Phil will soon be leaving St. John’s for a residency in Montreal. As his departure grows closer, he needs to pare down some of his collection to make the move easier.
“I have a huge stockpile of vintage things, so I’m just kind of offloading that right now,” he said. “I saw that since the pandemic started, there’s been an explosion of vintage stores on Instagram. I thought that might be a good option, so I set up a store about a month ago and it’s been going really well, stuff has been selling like hotcakes on there.”
Phil’s Instagram page, @newfoundlandvintage, has a lot of kitchenware items, including a vintage fondue pot, Pyrex dishes, salt and pepper shakers, serving trays, and ice buckets. Many of the items he’s posted have sold quickly.
He finds that bigger pieces, like furniture, tend to sell better on Facebook Marketplace, noting the demographic does tend to skew a little older there. A recently-sold credenza, or sideboard, received attention from about 150 people, with some offering twice the listed price.
“I don’t think there’s a lot of the Baby Boomer generation on Instagram,” Leblanc said. “But they are on (Facebook) Marketplace, and I usually find that that’s the generation or the customers that want to handle more (expensive pieces) and they’ll be quite aggressive about it, so you have to you have to ask for a little bit more than what you actually want to get out of it.”
It’s a different story on Instagram, he says, where there’s rarely any haggling.
“You can put what you think is a fair price and people will people will just kind of snag it,” he says.
Some other Atlantic Canadian vintage shops on Instagram are @peivintage, which sells vintage streetwear and sports apparel. In Nova Scotia, @novascotiashoppe features a variety of vintage items including vinyl records, mugs, and other collectibles.