Who Buys Used Socks?

I will be the first to admit that I am a thrift store diva. My favorite t-shirts are those that I purchased at either Goodwill or Salvation Army. I especially like athletic shirts, the kind issued to community baseball leagues and such. They are so comfortable thanks to the right blend of cotton and the fact that someone else has already worn them in. The absolute best is finding a family reunion or similar shirt celebrating something from the mid 90s, providing the shirt with the right amount of time to age properly.

What gets me though is the fact that thrift stores sell used socks.

Who the hell wants to wear a socks worn in by someone else? This perturbs me. I am a sock fanatic, to the point that I only wear new socks. Seriously, I refuse to wear the same pair twice. A lot of people find my sock obsession absurd, but think about it. I spend about $7.00 for a package of 10 socks, so that is less than a dollar a day for the joy that comes with wearing a new pair of socks. Millions of cigarette addicts smoke a pack or more a day, and the average cost of a pack of cigarettes is around $5.00. Now what makes less sense? I could spend less than a dollar a day for pure comfort and better well being, or I could spend five times that to decrease my life span and be shunned everywhere I go. See now how logical my choice is? Feel free to adopt my ways.

Anyway, back to used socks. Besides the grossness factor involved with wearing something that touched the feet of a total stranger (I hate feet by the way), I'm perplexed by a few things:

1. Who donates socks? I know people donate a lot of crap, but who honestly looks at a pair of socks and thinks, "Well these are no longer good enough for me, but I'm sure some other poor sap would enjoy them."

2. How do they keep pairs of socks together? I could barely match two similar socks together in my own collection before I made the switch to new socks. How do they handle sorting through hundreds of socks at a time and ensuring matching socks stay together? Imagine the time and money wasted on such a futile effort. It could be spent blogging about used socks instead.

3. How do the decide which socks are nice enough to sell? I spent some time volunteering at a local Goodwill (court ordered), and I was amazed at how much stuff is passed over and thrown away. Seriously, I would say at least half the items that came in never made it to the sales floor. I saw them throw away over 20 televisions in one day without bothering to test them because they were already inundated with them. Thankfully I avoided the sock selection process, but perhaps it would have helped me write this article. Do they have a limit on how man holes are in the sock, or how many toes can poke through? Do they make judgments on coloration. such as deducting points for grass and dirt stains?

4. Most importantly, who is such a cheapskate that they will buy socks from a thrift store? Now, as I said before, I love thrift store shopping, especially for shirts and such, but that is totally different than buying socks. The shirts at thrift stores generally range anywhere from $1 to $3, versus spending $20 plus dollars for a new shirt. That is a huge difference. Now, socks at a thrift store probably go for 25 cents a pair, and as I mentioned before, they can be purchased brand new for about half a buck more. Who is that desperate for 50 cents that they are willing to wear old socks?

Now, what makes this topic so special to me is that I go through hundreds of socks each year. So what do I do with them? As tradition goes, I pass them on down to my younger brother. Really though, they have only been worn once and are still in good condition. However, I only see him once or twice a year, so I have this huge collection of socks building up. Sometimes I will let them pile up and mail them in a box attached to a "POSTAGE PAID FOR" envelope addressed to a debt collector or snail mail scam company (though tires are better to send). Lately I've thought about making custom sock puppets and selling them online. The proceeds could go to finding a cure for athlete's foot - then I could finally have something named after me.