Red Cross Blogs

Ladies’ bottoms and other great shop donations

By Alix Miller
July 26, 2010 at 10:19 am

A journalist from the Daily Mail spotted a receipt for a skirt from one of our shops recently, which read: ‘Ladies’ bottoms £4.50’. A bargain bottom, I’d say.

Joking aside, members of the public donate some amazing things to our charity shops; the other day we heard our shop in Aberaeron had received a Lowry print of St Lukes church in London, for example. We subsequently sold this in a fine art sale, netting the British Red Cross £400.

Lorraine Fong, a colleague at our London office, also stumbled on a real find last year, while shopping for her wedding dress at our Dorking shop, which specialises in bridalwear. She picked up an Alfred Angelo ex-sample for £200 (worth over £1,000 new). I think you’ll agree, she looks stunning in it.

But my favourite donation is the 26-foot yacht called Whispers, which sailed – not literally you understand – into the Pontypool shop. Not being the sort of thing you can bring in in a plastic bag, a local Red Cross volunteer, Andrew Downie,  a keen sailor was able to organise the finer details.

The donor had not used the yacht for over 15 years and was keen to donate it to a good cause. It’s expected to fetch up to £5,000 at an auction at the end of this month.

So, if you’ve got a Ferrari you don’t need any more or some Van Gogh originals going begging, say, why not donate them through your local Red Cross shop.

Image © Lila Photography

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Tags: bridalwear, charity shops, shops

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 26th, 2010 at 10:19 am and is filed under Fundraising and events, UK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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