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My thought after reading several paragraphs is that the author may have chosen women's tops for analysis because that's the group of items where the greatest depth of data exists across all of Goodwill's categorized SKUs.

The article begins with "After 10ish years of second-hand shopping, I've started to ask myself a lot of questions about the clothes I've been buying..." but never says that the author buys this sort of item in particular.

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Consider yourself lucky that I cut the over-long biographical introduction about my views on shopping and the effect of going back to school on my budget. I can tell you right now: neither funny nor interesting.

But for your curiosity, I chose women's tops because it's an item I buy, it represents a good portion of Goodwill sales (though I don't know how much), and it gives some consistent area for comparison more than if I was looking at, say, everything from old TVs to ceramic knick knacks.

I'm pretty thrilled you read several paragraphs though, haha.

Based on my bunch of visits to local second-hand shops (not the US), women's clothing overshadows the supply for men, so much so that those are basically ‘women's second hand clothing stores’. And I'd easily expect tops to dominate the selection.

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