On a recent day at Pig + Pearl Secondhand store in Boulder, a family roamed the aisles looking for a birthday gift for one of the young children. The idea was to remake a bedroom exactly how she wanted it.
Shop owner Jennifer Greany watched while she organized piles of clothing for other customers. She was struck by how careful the family members were. Frequently, one of the parents or children would venture over to grandparents sitting in donated chairs lining a wall. Speaking in hushed voices with furrowed brows, they seemed concerned as they held up pillowcases, sheets and bedding.
After an hour of shopping, the family approached the register. When Greany informed them that each item was no more than $7, out came tears of joy.
“There are really kind families and individuals, and we get to meet them every day,” Greany said. “People are really, really grateful when they can get things for a low price.”
Pig + Pearl now sells donated secondhand clothing for $1 to $3 per item, earning its bona fides as one of the cheapest thrift stores in Boulder. However, the volunteer-supported shop has faced various financial setbacks, including years of construction and traffic detours on Arapahoe Avenue that kept customers away. That was after the original business, then named Ares Thrift Store and located closer to downtown Boulder, was bought out by a company building luxury condos, forcing the store to move to a location tucked behind Snarf’s Sandwiches about 2.5 miles east of central Boulder.
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“We are here out of spite,” said Greany, who supplements in-store sales with online auctions to keep Pig + Pearl in the black and support various animal-rescue organizations. “We actually lose money being here.”
Thrift stores like Greany’s used to be known purely for low-priced clothing and home goods. But the market dynamics have shifted as thrifting has become motivated by environmentalism as much as economics. And now an increasing number of shoppers see financial opportunity on the same racks, sifting through clothing and household items to resell on the secondary market. With an increase in the value of secondhand items comes a wave of rising prices, changing the once-emphasized affordability of thrifting, while simultaneously creating potential for income beyond the stores.
As the gap between the top income earners and the bottom widens, thrifting has evolved from an affordable and accessible source of clothing into something that favors those who can afford rising prices.
According to a report by Moody’s Analytics, the U.S. consumers in the top 20% hit multidecade highs in discretionary spending last year while the remaining 80% hit remarkable spending lows as many struggled to afford basic living expenses such as rent. The phenomenon that describes this wealth gap is better known as the “K-shaped economy” which refers to the upward and downward wealth trends for the top and bottom incomes in the U.S.
“The term came out of the pandemic, and it’s kind of interesting because basically 70% of the economy comes from consumer spending,” said University of Colorado professor Shawn Swanson, who specializes in public economics. “So it’s a huge part of what makes the U.S. economy go round, but now it’s the case that the top 10% account for 50% of that consumer spending.”
As it applies to the secondhand clothing industry, economic pressures naturally inflate prices. According to ThredUp’s Resale Report, prices for secondhand clothing have increased by 40% over the past five years. The secondhand retail market increased 14.3% in 2025 to a whopping $56 billion, according to Capital One Shopping research.
“When something becomes trendy, you have these people with a little bit more money demanding the same clothes that would otherwise go to the homeless and push up prices,” Swanson said. “Poor people have less ability to cope than rich people.”
Greany sees the wealth gap impact her customers in real time, but her commitment to affordability affirms shoppers who may be less financially secure.
“So with the increased costs of life hitting and just various ups and downs with our economy, we hear a very tangible constraint of finances with our customer base,” Greany said. “With our $3 price model, what folks may not catch is we’re getting ‘thank yous’ all day long.”
Pig + Pearl’s unusually low prices contrasts with those of other local secondhand stores.
Shoppers Ariel Patterson and Chris Leonard peruse the secondhand offerings at Pig + Pearl in Boulder. (Jeremy Sparig, Special to The Colorado Sun)
Mission driven means supporting the mission
The well-known nonprofit Goodwill has been around since 1902 and has more than 3,000 brick-and-mortar thrift store locations as well as an online store. The secondhand stores consistently rank high on “best thrift store lists” in the U.S., based on its extensive merchandise selection and high number of outlets.
While Goodwill maintains a level of affordability, its social mission informs its business model, which prioritizes funding programs that connect unemployed individuals with job opportunities, provide math and computer training as well as supporting various local groups.
“There is a misconception out there that our mission is to sell things cheaply,” Goodwill brand manager Stephanie Bell said. “Our mission is to help people live a higher quality of life and help them elevate their lives.”
Like other retailers, Goodwill faces market pressures beyond customer demand.
“We want to maintain our presence for consumers in the community, and unfortunately sometimes that means our prices have to go up,” Bell said, referencing costs like rent and wages that go into maintaining their brick-and-mortar locations.
“Families are trying to stretch their dollar farther and farther so we want to be that resource,” she said. “At the same time, we’re subject to those market factors and we don’t want to go out of business.”
Greany’s approach prioritizes community impact over funds.
“This is not a money grab of a business by any means,” she said. “It’s a service mission, and it just does something personally for us and fulfills that piece.”
Similar to Goodwill, TRU Community Care is a mission-driven organization with a brick-and-mortar thrift store that helps fund its programs. Located about a quarter-mile from Pig + Pearl, TRU Thrift Shop serves similar communities and shares similar values.
Lynn McCullough has overseen TRU’s retail operations for more than 20 years. She says affordability remains a top priority for the organization, which provides hospice, palliative and memory care in Boulder County.
“Selling (cheaper) in volume actually raises more money for our organization than trying to price people out of being able to afford our store,” she said. “Slowly prices do change, but we haven’t changed prices based on demand.”
Making money is part of business for most, but where that money goes is what sets TRU apart from others.
“I love that we’re a true nonprofit,” McCullough said. “We’re a local organization so the money stays in the community.”
TRU Hospice Thrift Store in Boulder, where you can find anything from puppets to toys to housewares. Sales from the shop support medical services including hospice care. (Jeremy Sparig, Special to The Colorado Sun; Caitlin Alexander, CU News Corps)
Taking being thrifty out of thrift stores
In her 20 years working for TRU, McCullough has seen the evolution of thrifting’s popularity and said it started with a different reputation than it has now.
“When we opened our store in 2005, we still had to convince people that it was OK to shop at thrift stores,” McCullough explained.
Now thrifting is more popular than ever. CU students Valentina Desiderio Rodriguez and Sutton Raeburn began their thrifting journeys early in life and keep the hobby alive as they continue to develop their closets.
“Secondhand shopping has always been a major part of my life, as someone who didn’t grow up with that much money,” Desiderio Rodriguez said. “It’s important to always have affordable and easy ways for people to get involved in fashion without having to splash out on really expensive things.”
Filling a closet with unique and sustainable pieces is often the motive of those who can keep up with the spending, but for those with basic needs, affordable options are crucial.
“I think once these stores start becoming unaffordable for those people is when we have failed as a society,” Raeburn said. “It’s when we have started to disrespect the lower-class community.”
She also pondered what it even means to be a thrift store and if one without affordable pricing defeats the point of the business model.
“You’re not a thrift store if you become expensive,” she said.
Raeburn is an avid thrifter, but draws the line when it comes to an increase in prices for once cheap items.
“I cannot even tell you how many times I’ve gone to the thrift store and then not bought anything because, yeah this is cute but do I really want to pay $15 for a damn pair of jeans?” Raeburn said.
Motives and dynamics of thrifting have changed
As attitudes surrounding thrifting have changed, Greany emphasizes the way sustainable shopping could help mend the holes the mainstream retail industry has made in the environment.
“That whole life cycle of those items that are essentially discarded from others (creates) a volume that makes it so abundantly clear that we must start with what’s already been produced,” she said. “It’s killing our literal home and out of sight, out of mind, is only going to last so long.”
Another crucial part of the thrifting ecosystem are resellers who gather secondhand clothing, whether new or vintage, and resell unique pieces, usually for higher prices.
Justin Speegle is a local reseller who started his curated vintage business after quitting his job working at a car museum in 2019. When a hobby turned into hundreds of dollars of profit a month, Speegle decided he would pursue reselling full time, which sent him diving through unsorted bins of secondhand clothing at a Goodwill warehouse. But almost seven years later, the reselling scene has changed, impacting his sourcing.
Regulars picking the bins “have multiplied in the past five years and they start grabbing everything and there’s twice as many people looking for the same things,” he said. “Now there’s sometimes 50-80 high school kids coming into the bins.”
Resellers are a big part of keeping clothing out of landfills, but as it continues to pique the interest of more people, stocking thrift stores and maintaining donations may be slowing down.
“A lot of people aren’t even donating what they would’ve been donating six years ago because the trend is so large people are looking in their own closets to see what might be worth money and they’re just selling it themselves instead of donating,” Speegle said.
To some, resellers seem to be part of the reason why thrift stores are upping prices to compete, potentially resulting in a market that favors items that hold greater value.
“Now it is so, so, so expensive and I think it is because of reselling and people realize that there’s a lot of value in vintage stuff,” Raeburn said. “So people start going to thrift stores and just buying things in bulk and then reselling them at a higher price.”
Greany understands that while, yes, resellers are picking through stores like hers to find the cream of the crop, it also provides financial benefits.
“We have some who are single parents, and it’s a form of income and a revenue stream into their bank accounts that keep their family going,” Greany said.
Thrifting’s popularity continues to grow with new stores opening all the time, but understanding the mission of each store and where the donations go is vital to carrying on this booming hobby. As the economy continues to sink its teeth into the budgets of families locally and nationally, affordability remains as important as ever, especially to the team at Pig + Pearl.
“Raising the prices is just not an option, because we see the other side,” Greany said. “We see the families that have to make those tough decisions and if you can make a kid’s birthday and lower your price by a couple bucks, let’s just keep the prices low.”