Goodwill’s Garage Sale : ‘As Is’ Store in Santa Ana Brings In a Regular Crowd of Treasure Hunters

Six mornings a week, bargain hunters gather outside Goodwill Industries’ “As Is” store on North Fairview Street, waiting for the chain-link gate to swing open.

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Milling about the parking lot, they attach scraps of paper to a corrugated metal fence, marking their spots in line.

As their numbers grow, street vendors corral their carts along the sidewalks, seeking customers for their Popsicles, candy and drinks.

“A few of us used to be here when there were only maybe eight or 10 of us in line,” said Danny, who for almost a decade has searched for second-hand treasure among the store’s racks and rows of dregs and castoffs. “Now it’s a different story.”

These days the line has as many as 200 people on some mornings, with many looking for anything they can sell at swap meets here and in Mexico.

The longtime regulars like Danny are there, though mostly as a pastime.

“It’s just a habit. This is a disease,” said Al, who like Danny declined to give his full name, but said he was 62 and retired. “I do this for my hobbies. I repair projectors and things like that.”

The “As Is” store shares a lot in the 400 block of North Fairview Street with the Goodwill offices and businesses, which train and employ handicapped people in assembly, institutional laundry and food-service jobs.

The grungier “As Is” store is at the opposite end of the property from the clean, brightly lit thrift shop, where Goodwill sells the best clothes, toys and appliances culled from the 100 tons of goods donated each month.

Under its metal roof, the open-sided “As Is” store gets what the thrift store doesn’t want--the jeans with bleach spots, the chair with a bad leg, the stroller with a gimpy wheel.

But that doesn’t deter its shoppers, who line up every day but Sunday, when the store is closed.

On a recent morning, a smaller-than-usual crowd gathered. They took their spots next to the markers as 10 a.m. neared. Soon, the gate swung open.

And the race was on.

Near the front of the store, women silently scurried to 20-foot-long bins mounded with clothes. They dug, pulled and tossed through pants, shirts, shorts and blouses.

At the far end, Sally Tapia, 14, and her father Tony, both of Santa Ana, raced to grab baby strollers, toys and furniture.

“We’re taking it to the swap meet in Calexico,” she said.

Another man loaded a cart with an odd range of items including rusty garden rakes and a vaporizer. Nearby, a woman had already grabbed a gold and green table lamp without a shade and was marching to the front counter.

Yet, there were many items on this day that not even these shoppers seemed interested in. No one went near the golf clubs standing in the rusty oil barrels, the paired and orphaned snow skis looking like wallflowers at a dance, the electric typewriters and record players crowded together on a shelf, or the sofas and chairs lined up like silent audiences.

Popular or not, none of the items in the “As Is” market carries a price tag. The store has a more flexible system.

“This is probably the only place in Orange County where you can buy clothing by the pound,” said Goodwill spokeswoman Cindy Gertz. To be exact, $1.75 a pound.

Prices of all other items are left to the keen eyes of workers at the front counter, who assign a value after a half-second scan.

“It’s easy, really,” said Rudy Fairchild, the 25-year-old lead clerk who rings up merchandise on the cash register. “I, myself, shop a lot. I go to swap meets, malls, and I look at items I normally see here. I go on the price that people can afford. Not too much. Not too low.”

After an hour, as the professional scavengers dwindled and the mad scramble subsided, a man quietly sorted through a bin of dog-eared books and National Geographic magazines.

“Just a black man you met along the way,” he replied when asked his name.

Holding two novels in his hand and judging most books by their covers, he said he often looks for cookbooks to take home to his wife.

“My wife likes to cook,” he said. “Here you’ll find some of the older and better ones.”

His search was momentarily interrupted, however, by a man who looked out of place in a white shirt and loosened tie. The man wanted to know who could help him open a cage filled with tangled stacks of record albums.

“Go see Rudy over there,” the black man said, pointing to the front counter.

Soon Fairchild was helping the shirt-and-tie guy, Jim Hansen, open the cage.

Hansen, a collection manager for an Anaheim bank, burrowed into the pile, reaching a well-maintained box of discs that his trained eye had already sorted from the rest.

With tastes rooted in his ‘60s youth, he looked pleased to rescue the recorded works of Credence Clearwater Revival, the Beatles, Mary Wells, Marvin Gaye, Little Anthony and the Imperials, and the Righteous Brothers.

“I come out here on an average of once a week,” Hansen said. “I basically collect. I’m picking up things I had years ago and played to death. . . . It’s like a great treasure hunt.”

After inspecting the vinyl, however, only two Righteous Brothers albums (their covers still protected by the original plastic wrap) and the Beatles’ “Rubber Soul” record made his final cut. The precious gems cost him 50 cents apiece, about 30 minutes off his lunch hour, and a freshly broken sweat.