Post #7383 by woofmutt on Sun, Sep 1, 2002 9:10 PM

Wandering one of my regular thrift shop haunts (a for profit place) recently I noticed that their price for aloha shirts had jumped to $10 (average short sleeved shirt price there is $4) and Tiki mugs were making it into the locked "special junk" case. Obviously the owners of the chain have become aware that these items are now "collectible" and have priced accordingly. Possibly they got some direction from prices paid on eBay. It seems likely that eBay has affected prices in junk shops, flea markets, et cetera by providing a sort of data base sellers can access to get an idea of what an item is and what it's worth. eBay hasn't completely become an information source as the occasional identification on eBay of Tiki mugs as "tropical vase" or "Hawaiian drinking stein" show. But eBay is a beginning, and it occured to me while in that junk shop that we probably aren't far from the day when you will use your hand held internet communications device to take a digital image of an item and do a world wide search for information and average price paid. I wonder what junk collecting will be like when the majority of items a store is selling are correctly identified and prices are based on actual data and not conjecture.