Funny, I was never under the impression that Value Village had *any*
charitable connections... I remember when they started popping up in
Canada everyone was pissed because they where buying-out all the
Goodwill stores and charging twice the price for the same old crap, but
there was never any doubt that it VV was a for-profit deal. Maybe their
P-R department is less active up here (no doubt due to the cold).
Still, on average it is a lot cheaper to buy computer stuff at VV (and
have the chance to actually plug it in and test it) than it is to ship
the same stuff even a short distance.
OTOH, pawn shops can be pretty good if you feel like haggling a bit. If
you see an A2 for sale start asking questions like you would if you were
shopping for a new PC -- when the hard drive is revealed to be
non-existent along with USB ports etc, the price is likely to plummet
very quickly.
-- =LUDDITE ENTERPRISES= http://www.luddite.ca