From rags to riches?

Sue remembers several bags that had come from an elderly woman's house. "I think someone must have just gone through and emptied her drawers without really looking. There were two vibrators in their original boxes. They were very old." Sue threw them away - used sex toys, even those in original packaging, are not a particularly big seller - but now she says, with a laugh, that she should have given them to a museum.

Some people donate clothes that are so dirty, stained and decrepit they go straight for recycling, but I'm surprised that so many clean items in almost pristine condition aren't sellable - anything from Primark, for instance, or one of the supermarkets, and especially children's clothes.

"They're so cheap to begin with that we can't sell them," says Sue. They would take up valuable space in the small shop. Instead these clothes go in the "rag" pile - they are bought by "the rag man", who comes every week to collect the bags and pays around £100 for a load: the good clothes are sent to developing countries, the unusable ones are recycled. There is also a "cull" pile - unsold clothes that have been in the shop for more than two weeks which are sent to another branch, to see if they have a better chance there.

What is surprising, in the era of eBay, is how many really good-quality belongings people donate. One night, just as Sue and Tessa were shutting the shop, two young women brought five black bags in. "They said, 'It's all new stuff,' and, well, I hear that a lot and it often isn't," says Sue. "I said thanks very much and off they went. When we opened up one of the bags, it was full of designer clothes, all brand new with their price tags still on - they had come from Harvey Nichols. There must have been about £5,000 worth of stuff in there. That was brilliant. We sold it all really quickly." Any designer clothes will have gone within a day, she says. Every volunteer can reel off the labels that always sell well here: Juicy Couture, D&G, Prada, Gucci. "We're Essex," says Sue. "People love their labels."

While I go around the shop tidying rails, I spot a pair of checked trousers by Emanuel Ungaro (£8) and a black chiffon Gharani Strok dress (£12). A woman has noticed a beautifully cut black wool jacket in the window (from the Italian label Cerruti, £22). "I'll always stop by if I'm passing," she says, plucking crisp notes out of a Louis Vuitton purse. "I always find a bargain."

At 3pm on a Tuesday, the shop is remarkably busy, a sure sign of recession shopping. "Actually, this is quite steady," says Jean on the till. "We've been much busier than this." By 5pm, they have taken £500 and there has been no shoplifting as far as anyone can tell (occasionally people walk into the changing rooms with items off the rails, then walk out of the shop leaving their old clothes in a pile on the floor). It has been a good day. My only regret is losing out to someone else on an old Fortnum & Mason picnic basket for £2.50.