By JADA FLETCHER
The provenance of the “surplus” items at this Greenmount Avenue thrift store may surprise you.

When I want to press my thin dime even flatter, I keep an eye out for retail buzzwords, like surplus, outlet or wholesale. Most stores so-named have received at least one visit from me, but for whatever reason, I’d never made my way into the Goodwill Surplus Store on Greenmount, across the street from Normals Books and Records, another place I’ve been “meaning” to visit (but still haven’t).

In truth, I’d been avoiding Goodwill for a few years, finding the prices steadily creeping up into new/off-priced territory. Stock overruns are one thing, consignment is another, but “used” items mean, to me, $2 shirts and $3 pants. (My standards can be exacting.) To my knowledge, though, this is the only Goodwill in the area with “surplus” in the name, a powerful lure.

When my friend K and I walked up, I immediately noticed the table of new-in-box shoes, tags still affixed. They were from some of Target’s in-house brands and not marked as irregular, nor did they seem out of season. Curious, we went inside and found the usual resale mixture combined with that thrift-store preservative fragrance that can be a bit noxious when inhaled for extended periods. Fortunately, the store’s pretty small, with shelves of home goods on the left and in front, and three or four racks of clothes toward the right, with accessories and some home electronics lining the rear.

I noticed many of the goods had the Target trademark, from an impressive stock of birdfeeders and accessories to Hello Kitty gift bags and a stand of cell phone rechargers, all of them new. I asked a clerk whether Goodwill has a special partnership with Target and learned that they simply buy Target clearance items for “a nice price and resell them for a nicer one.” I had to agree, noticing that the Goodwill price was about 50 cents below the lowest Target sticker (50-75% off original retail), so someone looking to sustain a flock of pigeons could really clean up. This Goodwill also carries the expected household castoffs.
Non-Target items were unmarked and you can take them to the counter and get them priced. That was the case with the trip’s premium find, a hot pink, LL Bean backpack with lime-green flowers ($3), slightly dirty but otherwise in good condition, with no holes. Also a good deal: a Columbia Sportwear coat, suited to a large child or small woman, with a lift ticket still attached. This one had made its way from the former Montage Mountain in Pennsylvania.

While K and I didn’t unearth anything we had to take home, we found it to be a good spot for odds and ends and probably the place to hit before making your way to the real Target over at Mondawmin. And older adults, take note: this Goodwill offers a 20% discount to senior citizens each Wednesday.

3101 Greenmount Ave., Baltimore, MD 21218, (410) 467-7505