The bins at Goodwill’s Outlet and Distribution Center.

Photo: Matt Ironside

“Go ahead, guys, it’s ready,” shouts the Goodwill’s Outlet attendant over Olivia Newton John’s “Lets Get Physical,” signaling the waiting crowd’s freedom to shop the most recently replaced bin.

It’s barely noon as Callie Hollins and the other pickers rush from behind the worn yellow line, securing front row positions with half-full shopping carts while their arms plunge shoulder deep into the heaps of used clothing and accessories.

Reaching over a small Asian-American woman, Hollins snatches away a handful of T-shirts to throw over her shoulder, while protecting a tangle of denim with another quick arm.

Like children scrambling for quarters buried beneath the sand in a Fourth of July treasure hunt, it’s every person for her or himself at “the bins.”

Located in the emerging artist community recently dubbed Georgetown, Seattle’s Goodwill Outlet and Distribution Center squats in the nondescript string of warehouses along Colgate Street. The cold cement floor of the building is lined with 11 rows of oversized plastic bins overflowing with the regular retail store’s excess stock, everything from hats and handbags to lingerie and linens. Piled against the high walls, which have been covered in slick white plastic, are stacks of discount furniture, all priced between $2 and $4 due to broken table legs, deep gashes, missing drawers, and other time induced defects.

Shopper Jeff Cox shops for items to sell to resale stores.

Photo: Matt Ironside

Filling every other inch of empty space are the afternoon regulars. However, only some of them are here merely to shop. The remaining fifteen or twenty are pickers.

Hollins, clad is ratty black converse and expensive Adriano Goldschmied jeans, describes herself as one of the “pickers.” The term refers to the subculture of Goodwill customers who purchase drastically discounted items at the outlet and then resell them to vintage clothing boutiques. Since everything from the bins is sold by the pound, pickers are able to turn a profit by reselling their individual “picks” for much higher prices.

Seattle has five of these “buy-sell-trade” boutiques, which are neither consignment nor thrift stores, all located on Capitol Hill with the exception of the Buffalo Exchange in the University District. Here’s how it works: anyone can bring clothing, including shoes, into the stores to be looked over and possibly bought by a specially trained “buyer.” Each store has its own pricing standards, allowing their buyers to determine how much they will pay for an item based on factors such as its condition, size, original retail price, novelty value, and age. The “seller” than receives either cash or store credit for any items that were bought and the “buyer” prices the purchased items, adding them to the store’s inventory.

Mimi, a four-year-old Shih Tzu, waits as her owner sifts through clothing.

Photo: Matt Ironside

“You have to know your market, what the stores are looking for,” says Daniel Voss, a recent graduate of Seattle University.

Voss, like Hollins, considers himself a picker. Pickers arrive at the Goodwill Outlet almost every day just as the garage-like metal doors are slid open at 9 a.m. and usually stay until the doors are pulled shut at 5 p.m.

Hollins prefers to take the weekends off, but Voss will sometimes go weeks without a break from the bins.

They both agree, however, that missing more than a couple of days a week can be leaving too much to chance. Especially since the profit they make from the local “buy-sell-trade” boutiques is their only source of income.

That is what defines a true picker.

Most pickers have an extensive knowledge of vintage clothing, usually from working in vintage boutiques. Some, like Hollins, have even been employees at the stores to which they now sell.

A shopper looks through one of the audio and video bins at Goodwill.

Photo: Matt Ironside

“I can just look at a shirt and tell when it was made and out of what,” Voss boasts while thumbing through the same mess of clothes as if every time is the first.

“You only get a second to decide,” he says. “People are ruthless when the new stuff comes out.”

Voss says that he’d rather buy and sell from the bins than work a job in the formal economy. He made $750 in a single week last month. He says, however, that what attracts him to picking is the “thrill of the find."

“It’s not always a treasure trove like people think. Some days you find a plethora of ‘60s mod dresses and sometimes all you get is garbage. I’ve found diapers and syringes, ya know,” Voss suddenly wheels his shopping cart around and speeds toward the shoe bin.

Goodwill employee Dan O’Day wheels out another bin of clothing to waiting shoppers.

Photo: Matt Ironside

The oversized clock has just struck three in the afternoon as a small crowd of pickers seat themselves among the discount furniture to swap gossip and sort through the day’s finds. Nearby, an elderly woman closely inspects a pair of red panties. Anna Blunk, a girl in her late 20s with a complexion to rival Snow White’s, dangles her legs over an oak dresser while talking to Hollins. She is in mid sentence when a shout of “All Ready” interrupts David Bowie’s Golden Years.

The sentence is never finished as Hollins dashes for the newly replaced bin.