Our Story

Always on the Hunt

Long before there was a Backwoods Thrifter page, there was the hunt.

I grew up in southwest Arkansas, where buying and selling was just part of life. My dad was an entrepreneur who made a living buying, selling, and trading everything from goods to property. I learned pretty early that value can turn up just about anywhere.

And I guess I never stopped looking for it.

Over the years, I've bought, repaired, recycled, scrapped, and resold just about anything I thought might have a little money on it. I was selling on eBay back in its earliest days, ran computer repair and recycling businesses, and always had some kind of buying and selling going on along the way.

I've never had one particular “thing” I look for.

Thrift stores, yard sales, flea markets, estate sales, storage units, auctions, liquidation stores, roadside finds, free piles, retail clearance, and little towns in the middle of nowhere, if there's somewhere to dig, I'm probably going to look.

And if nobody else has gone through it yet? Even better.

The question in my head has pretty much always been the same:

“I wonder if that has some money on it?”

The Hunt Is Only the Beginning

Sometimes you find jewelry or an antique that pays for an entire day of hunting. Other times the good buy is a boring $5 textbook that sells for $45.

That's reselling, and I show both sides of it.

But somewhere along the way, this business also turned me into a bit of an investigator.

When I find something unusual, I want to know what it is, who made it, how old it is, where it came from, and what story it has to tell.

One time I ended up with an original handwritten German journal from the 1800s. I couldn't read a word of it, so I spent almost an entire day using Google Lens to translate it page by page. What looked like an old book nobody could read slowly became the story of someone's life, seemingly written near the end of it.

That's the kind of thing I love about this business.

I've opened a storage unit and uncovered hundreds of original works by artist Chester Snowden, with pieces eventually making their way into museums and collections. I've found an ivory-and-gold cane that I eventually sold to Charlie Daniels.

And I've bought plenty of things that weren't worth a darn.

You just never know until you look.

Then Came Backwoods Thrifter

For years, my son told me I needed to start filming all the stuff I was already doing.

Eventually, I listened.

I started Backwoods Thrifter on Facebook to bring people along for the hunt, teach what I've learned about buying and reselling, and show what this business actually looks like.

I never expected so many people to care about what we were doing.

I don't look at the number on the page and just see a follower count. Those are real people who choose to watch our videos, leave comments, share their stories, teach us things, laugh with us, and spend part of their day following whatever we've gotten ourselves into.

I try to answer as many of you as I can because that community has become one of my favorite parts of all of this.

No Sugarcoating It

If there's one thing I want Backwoods Thrifter to be, it's real.

I'll show you the good buys and the bad ones. The jewelry and the textbooks. The storage units that make money and the ones that make me wonder what I was thinking.

I'll tell you what I paid, show you how I research things, and share what I learn along the way.

Juice is right there beside me for just about all of it. We're up early, hunting, digging, sorting, researching, listing, filming, and usually finding one more place to stop before we finally make it home.

We like old things. Weird things. Things with a story. Things everybody else overlooked.

But at the end of the day, I'm still a reseller.

Does it have some money on it?

The Goods

When we decided to make a Backwoods Thrifter shop, I knew I didn't want to fill it with random stuff just because we could put our logo on it.

I want The Goods to be things we'd actually use—functional, well-made products for people who enjoy hunting, thrifting, reselling, digging, exploring, or simply following along with us.

If you buy something, I want you to get something useful in return while also helping support Backwoods Thrifter and the next hunt.

More than anything, I hope you feel like you're part of this strange little community we've somehow built together.

So keep your eyes open. Dig through the box everybody else walked past. Pick up the weird thing and figure out what it is.

Because you never know.

It might have some money on it.

— Backwoods Thrifter