Amvets Thrift Store
Categories: Antiques, Used, Vintage & Consignment [Edit]
Neighborhood: Middletown3441 Sutherland St
(at Frontage Rd)
San Diego, CA 92110 (619) 297-4213
- Price Range: $
- Accepts Credit Cards: No
- Parking: Street
- Wheelchair Accessible: Yes
18 Reviews for Amvets Thrift Store
I used to shop here all the time. This place was the best, but just like everything else in this town, it has gone down hill. 50% off all but one color price tags on Wednesday and Saturday used to be great but now its a scam. I went today,maybe my last time, but it was 50% everything except red tags, but every tag was red. Back in the day they had white blue green yellow... where are all the other items with all those colors??? Prices used to be unbeatable, but now they are asking too mush for there crap. You can still find some cool stuff, but its not worth walking through tight isles with smelly people with a bunch of snot nosed brats running around. If you do go I suggest bringing some hand sanitizer.
Amvets is good for books, groovy leather coats circa 1970, polaroid cameras, princess fairy dresses, Engelbert Humperdink LP's, funky ties, cheap stuffed toys for the dog (make sure you wash 'em first!!), and vintage handbags- if you're lucky.
People thought this was:
Useful (1)
Funny (2)
Cool (1)
This is my favorite thrift store, ever!
There are racks and racks of amazing vintage and secondhand goods. I suggest taking 2-3 hours to browse everything. I've found so many amazing leather skirts and minidresses. There are no fitting rooms, so come dressed in something light so you can slip things on without undressing. My only complaint is that their shoe selection is minimal. But other than that, the staff is SO sweet. I've never left empty handed!
Best place in San Diego to do vintage shopping. Just be open minded and in the mood to dig. The place is huge.
Other Amvet locations are good, but this one doesn't thrill me. The parking always seems to be limited, and I dislike that long entrance into the store. It's really hard to find a true bargain within all that junque. The better stuff is behind the counter near the cash register, but good luck getting anyone to show it to you.
People thought this was:
Useful (1)
Funny (1)
Cool (1)
I've always described it to my friends as a Costco of all thrift stores! If you're in the mood to dig, and I mean dig, this is the perfect place! My luck has always been with finding pretty neat vintage belts and purses! They have a great selection, but you just have to dig of course. With my experience, it has been a little harder to find nice women's apparel... the selection is endless, but cute styles are pretty hard to come by at times. And like I said, you have to totally dig. But I guess that's half the fun! I found a really cool 70's suitcase once, and they also have a really good selection of random stuff to decorate your place with. Hoarders beware!!
Overall, this is a great place to find some good vintage pieces for a good price, only IF you're willing to spend some time in the store. It definitely beats paying triple at certain "thrift" buy-sell stores! Make sure to look up at the humongous sign behind the registers, which would be pretty hard to miss, to check out what items are half-off that day!
Khaki trench, silk blouse, sweater vest, scarf, and uhm a few other token novelties all under 30.00.
I took forever to browse through the color-coded racks. I kept going back to the shoe racks to try on these blue boots (size 6) . . i'm a 7ish. . wishing they would miraculousy change their size and fit. . these boots were amazing so i was disappointed they were not my size. . i was basically boot hunting and ended up with an armful of other goods that were goooood. i easily spent two hours in there, one thing leads to another. I wandered here, I wandered there.
One thing that is a con is the carts that some people don't know how to push and park diagonally in an aisle. C'mon cart people be courteous.
I love bric-a-brac. Worth sorting through for some one of a kind kitsch.
It is hard not to develop attention deficiency in this hodge podge. Places like that are important. You go to the run of the mill department stores and you know what you are going to get. You can return things, you can put items on hold. At Amvets, the shopping experience is different and more of an adventure. You are buying clothes with other people's tissues in the pockets, that you haven't tried on, that are phenomenal and 100% mo' betta.
People thought this was:
Useful (1)
Funny (1)
Cool (1)
This is place is awsome! It's a swapmeet, Flea Market, Junk, and antique store all rapped up in one! The prices are still "Thrift", Clothes in great shape, and always something to find. I do mean FIND! There so much to look through...plan on spending some time here depending on what your looking for. You can find classic electronics, good books, and even vintage music, still on LP's for about 50 cents. Clothes is the crem de la crem! You can always find a unique shirt or pair of pants for the night. What makes it even cooler is the fact that you dug and spent time to find this unique gem, and noone can duplicate it's "Awesomeness"!!!
Here is the catch! There is NO parking....there is but very difficult to find. You will have to march back and forth to this place if you plan on going late. People line up early....it opens at 9:00 AM!!! And there are those who get there at 8:30 AM!!! If you plan on going Saturday, expect a crowd, again no parking, and a line to check out, and finally, you will ask yourself what was this place before it was "Amvets"...this tends to go through peoples mind while they walk through this place. None of these things matter...when you find what your looking for! So, be patient, spend some time, spend little money, make your way to AMVETS!
People thought this was:
Useful (1)
Cool (1)
It is absolutely impossible for me to think of my undergrad years @ UCSD without thinking of Amvets, the greatest of all possible thrift stores. Many a Saturday morning was spent pushing through racks of thrift store t-shirts in hope of the perfect, confusing shirt from 1995 that would say something absolutely confusing, like the "Piqua Heritage Festival" with a smiling Native American inexplicably holding a tomahawk dangerously close to a musket-armed frontiersman, or Pullman Washington's Annual Lentil Festival t-shirt.
Now, in the days of threadless.com and Urban Outfitters, i remember and miss with even more fondness the great store that is Amvets. Maybe I'll go this weekend. I gotta keep my fake hipster cred.
People thought this was:
Useful (2)
Funny (1)
Cool (3)
This must be the place where awesome dead people request to have their stuff sent once they die because there is always some seriously cool shiznit at Amvets. Way better than Salvation Army.
On one particular trip I found teal snakeskin cowboy boots. I would have loved to meet the soul that rocked those suckers in the 80s. Though, maybe I already have met that soul due to the countless ghosts that are probably hanging around all their old belongings that are now in my apartment.
People thought this was:
Useful (1)
Cool (3)
This is like the Empire State Building of thrift stores in San Diego. It's huge! Easily twice as big as any other place I can think of, the sheer size of Amvets makes it easy to find cool wearable clothes. Part of the reason for that is also the great organization that one of the other reviewers mentioned. I usually zig-zag through the incredibly long aisles until I find something I like (which is not difficult).
AV
People thought this was:
Useful (2)
Funny (2)
Cool (2)
every once in a while, and i mean _rarely_ i pick up a total find at amvets. sometimes i can even buy clothes for around $2 that I know Buffalo Exchange or some other cash-for-clothes store will buy off me for more.
the joy of finding a great pair of shoes or a killer leather jacket or a cute sweater on the cheap is tempered by the times i try something on too hastily . . . only to realize that it smells like someone, crapped, vomited, or died in it. someone may have . . .
People thought this was:
Funny (1)
With a thrift store this huge, you're bound to find something special. There always seem to be cool coats here (yes, sometimes living in San Diego warrants coat-wearing), and I like to look through the formal wear for funny costumes. They have tons of books and records too. I will almost always go here before Target for household stuff. The one downside is that parking sucks. They have half-off tag specials almost every day, a good thing with the rising costs of used stuff (damn hipsters).
Now that I live in the Bay Area where a used t-shirt costs $5 (c'mon people, 99cents), I really appreciate AmVets. Everything is half-off on Wednesdays, and many things half-off Saturdays, with color tag sales throughout the rest of the week. For being in a "city," AmVets has a pretty great selection of reasonably priced awesome things. I won't go into a list of cherished purchases made here over the years, but I will say that one of the first things I used to do when I would come back after a month or so out of town would be to relish in temporary unemployment by taking a loooong walk down the hill (i.e. Washington), pop in to Gelato's for a coffee and a chat, and scour the aisles at AmVets while listening to smooth soft rock ballads. Oh, how I miss you, sweet gentle friend. And for chrissakes, shoppers, do not let your children wander in the store or play with the toys, and remove your hangers "antes de ir a pagar."
People thought this was:
Useful (3)
Funny (3)
Cool (1)
The best thrift store in the world, as far as I know. I once bought a complete Santa outfit, just before Halloween (try that on for size, Alanis) and it came with the coat, pants, boots, belt, hat, and giant fuzzy red/white present bag for $25. Not long after, I sported the coat and hat to the Whistle Stop's xmas party, featuring Ursula 1000, and scored not only a sweet angel statue from a random fenced yard next door (courtesy of my santa flying powers), but also this chick with huge boobs that lived next door. It was a night of drunken, gluttonous nakedness I'll not soon forget, and it's all thanks to Amvets.
Oh yeah, and they have 8-tracks there - I got Sabbath's "Paranoid", which is, without question, the greatest music ever recorded, on fricking 8-track. I rule.
People thought this was:
Funny (3)
Cool (1)
i used to be a lot more thrifty back in the day than i am now. guess i just decided to move on to clothes that others haven't done god knows what in. yet i decided to check out amvets due to it's rumored size. however what i found was a hole in the wall. wow, if this is what san diego calls an "empire state building" of thrift stores then i won't even bother going to any others. also i can say without a doubt, this is not the best thrift store in the world, sorry.
i did notice that this place has a boat load more of used dirty digs for the ladies than the guys. but thats usually the case in any thrift store. honestly i didn't find anything besides a jacket that i carried around for 10 mins in case at some point it started to look good, then i put it down. the racks were very well organized and color coordinated. however the rows are to close to each other. you have to like do a tango with someone if your heading in opposite directions to get around them.
important things to note, bring cash! yes no cards allowed. this always puts me off form making stupid impulse buys, which is probably a good thing. when you only got $10 in your pockets the gray coat you might think would be a good wear sometime down the road becomes the dirty, nope theres a spot there i don't really need this item it is. plus the parking lot seems like it is probably always be full so you will most likely have to park on the street, maybe the next block over.
People thought this was:
Useful (2)
Cool (1)
I used to shop here in my younger days or if we had some costume party to go to, so I haven't been here in years. Today (Saturday), I was on a mission to buy some cheap kids' clothing to donate to a friend's cause--she's in Uganda for several weeks volunteering at a school (on her own, not through an organization), and she wrote that the kids need some decent clothes (among other things). I was with my husband and toddler, and I was happy to see my daughter preoccupied with the toys nearby where I could see her while I checked out the children's racks. I narrowed my search to girls' dresses, and I still had so many good ones to choose from. When it was time to pay for my items, I noticed a big sign that said "50% off all items, except blue tags; 50% off bikes" (I didn't read through all the yelp reviews on this before going). Even though most of my items had blue tags, I was pretty excited about the discount on already cheap prices. My husband had found a couple of good Dr. Seuss books for our daughter, titles that I didn't even see at the Borders in Carmel Mountain just this past Thursday night, so we got those too. What a great deal...
There was just a short wait, and the cashier that helped me was not the friendliest at first... until my husband handed over my daughter to me, and her disposition lightened up a bit as she started talking to her.
Notes:
- They accept cash AND checks, per posted sign
- ATM on-site (to the left of the jewelry counter and registers)
- Parking was tight, but a couple of people were leaving when we got there ~ 12:30ish
People thought this was:
Useful (1)
Cool (1)
This thrift store inside a warehouse in the industrial void of middletown is worth a scour if you're looking for used goods. The rows and rows of clothing are well organized, as is the jewelry. The book selection is pretty good up front, and the housewares range from vintage looking, to kitschy ugly to just ugly, so there is something for everyone! If you are looking to donate, it's quick and easy to pull around the back and unload your goodies, you'll be out of there with your tax deduction in a snap!
People thought this was:
Useful (3)
Cool (1)
People Who Viewed This Also Viewed...
Related Lists
-
Dress me up!
Let's face it: 95% of people look ugly naked.… -
San Diego Snapshot
If I were to try to compress my experiences in San… -
San Diego Jamz
I don't live there anymore (thank god for that!)…
Hot and New
- Sunset Cliffs
66 reviews
Neighborhood: Ocean Beach
- Buga Korean BBQ
53 reviews
Neighborhood: Clairemont
- Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot…
65 reviews
Neighborhood: Clairemont
- Lolita's Taco Shop
81 reviews
Neighborhood: Kearny Mesa
- The Cowboy Star
45 reviews
San Diego, CA
