So, we are on a roll in Oxfam and there is lots to tell you, dear reader. ( If this makes no sense, I’m sorry but you will have to refer to the previous post.)

We have been busy clearing out – and under sorting benches, behind stacks of chairs (as previously mentioned), in nooks, crannies and corners, on the top of other stuff, under other stuff, in the store room – all covered in dust.

In plastic crates, in sagging cardboard boxes, in mysterious packaging, we have found stuff.

Miss Haversham eat your dusty heart out. Our two hoovers have been busy.

(Mind you before we get to the delights let me tell you that most of what was found was in the re-cycle bin before you could say, well, pretty much anything.

Oxfam promotions from last Christmas, two boxes of leaflets from a campaign in 2016, cookery books published by Oxfam in 2010 – mind you we put some of those out in the shop and offered the rest to volunteers as a small thank you for their work, especially at the moment.

Meanwhile, so far we have had three volunteers doing tip runs.)

But, some of the stuff is a delight and worth good money, but more of that later.

Well, go on then, enough of the clearing out, let’s do some of the delights now.

So, you know (from the previous blog) we have unearthed two boxes of old postcards.

One of our creative volunteers suggested – as they are not valuable – they could be made into decoupage panels to hang either side of our corner cabinet.

(Now we have only got that out in the shop rather than being permanently, shop manager-banished, to the cobwebbed corridor behind the scenes because the lovely area manager said – ‘Yes, let’s get it out and use it.’ Which we did.)

So, I put a call out on our village/hamlet WhatsApp group and asked if anyone knew anyone who did decoupage.

Of course they did – just like they did when I needed a skull for a Shakespeare display…..

So, we have a decoupage artist (and her artist-group friends, I gather) designing and making panels and our old (worthless) stamps, postcards, bits of stuff found in old books, old magazines, and and… will be transformed and I promise a photo when it is done.

OK, more delights?

Oxfam does good and popular cards but like all retail merchandising, we have old lines which are retired and new lines which come in.

There was a box of discontinued lines in the stock room and one of our volunteers said she had asked to put them out as their barcode still registered on the till, so they were saleable and they were heavily discounted – a bargain indeed.

She had been told she couldn’t as they had to wait to be returned to Oxfam for pulping but when we asked the the lovely area manager (for future reference, LAM) she said, ‘Why not. Let’s see what happens.’

We did, and our sales for Oxfam-produced goods went from about £50 the previous week to £200 the next week.

Now, I am pretty sure Oxfam would rather have the money than the cards to pulp….. I am not sure what £100 does in Yemen but I would bet it feeds a few children.

Enough of delights, or one more?

There are a few to chose from so you might find others in later instalments.

We have traditionally/always/in the teeth of good evidence/said this is too high a price point/  priced our CDs and DVDs at £2.99.

We, that is the two main CD and DVD volunteers, have lobbied for three years to have the price reduced. A combination of Spotify and Netflix etc meant our sales were falling. 

We did a survey of every charity shop in Petersfield, Chichester and Winchester and visits to any Oxfam shop we cam across on our travels came up with a comprehensive/irrefutable argument to reduce the price to £1.00.

The answer was no. Repeatedly no. The argument was you would need to sell three CDs at £1.00 to get the equivalent of one sale at £2.99. And anyway, it was Oxfam policy and therefore could not be changed.

That only works if indeed you do sell one at £2.99.

So, we asked the LAM if we could do the £1.00 pricing thing and she said, ‘Yes, of course.There is no central policy on pricing of CDs and DVDs’

So we did.

We have never sold as many CDs and DVDs as we have in the last few weeks.

We were endlessly re-filling the racks.

Yesterday, when I was on the till, a man bought 14 CDs and was chatting about how great it was to add to his collection. I asked if he would have bought them at £2.99 and he said he would have bought two of them.

He asked me to round up his ‘bill’ to £20 so I did.

( We made £268 yesterday which for many city Oxfam shops is nothing, but for a shop in a market town which was making about £100 per day, this is good news.)

Which leaves me with the the tantalising ‘promise’ another blog about unearthed really special old bellows cameras, some lovely old books from the 1700s and early 1800s, plans for Christmas and more….

Meanwhile can I tell you that for the last three weeks (and hopefully for weeks to come) we have made more than £1,000. It may not impress you but for us volunteers it is pretty impressive given that the shop was taking £600 – £700 a week. 

Yes we as a society have opened up which no doubt has helped sales, and yes takings fluctuate but on your behalf I would like at ask the amazing volunteer group who are keeping the shop not just afloat but sailing with a lovely breeze behind them, to take a bow.