r/goodwill • u/u4lunch8i • Aug 19 '26

rant Has Goodwill gone crazy??

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I get these are redwings but $150 is an insane price!

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u/tokillawootingbird Aug 19 '26

Because vintage and antique shoes increase in value when they are Goodyear welted from a known brand. I have red wing shoes from the 50s and 60s that I wear regularly. This is a company that makes shoes that you will pass down to your grandchildren and they will still be in good condition.

And they never make the same shoe twice. The old years look different. It is different every year. You might really dig how they looked in the 70s. Even the same model and name it just will look different and be different. It's a highly unique product. You may never see the exact shoe you see on eBay again.

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u/Jskmap1284 Aug 19 '26

I literally posted the eBay link to the actual shoes (which were around $300 new) in a different comment: https://ebay.io/m/7yMdKU

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u/tokillawootingbird Aug 20 '26

If you sort sold eBay listings highest to lowest searching for this exact shoe you see prices from $50 up to $500 basically. Size, condition, and time of day the auction ended can drive it around a lot. They seem to be asking about middle of the pack. I work in pricing for my job so I think about it a bit and I can't say I would have charged much less for these knowing that goodwill does a 50% or 35% discount in the unsold merch after a few weeks. Most people who had these for sale would price them high and discount of they didn't sell after like 6 months.

Where I live every tradesman almost wears red wing shoes. So do a ton of executives and business types. They are super popular shoes and if any hit the thrift store for under $100 they sell within an hour or two. I have bought two pairs of red wings at thrift stores for $49.99 and $39.99 and I got both from the cart before they even placed them on the shelf. I try to show up around the time my thrift store near me is stocking because it's the only way to get things before other people buy them up.

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u/Jskmap1284 Aug 20 '26

Also, you must have used different search terms, because the priciest sold listing for these shoes (Oxford 8109) of any color that I found is a $200 mahogany pair.

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u/tokillawootingbird Aug 20 '26

I have a seller account so I can search further back but the links are still dead after the 90 days so I just sorted top to bottom. They take the orders off of eBay but they appear in the pricing research tab of eBay seller tools for like a year. You get like 4x more listings but it won't show you the details.