Second time around around

Some Durham residents go home satisfied, laden with merchandise from a thrift store on Chapel Hill Road.

But for others, the racks of high-waist, tapered jeans and polyester just don’t cut it. Instead they walk across the parking lot to the unassuming building where customers are loading U-Haul trucks with office desks and dentist’s chairs.

Its the Duke Surplus Store serves, serving as a repository for discarded or unwanted items from University departments and the Medical Center. Though the ware isn’t quite representative of the Salvation Army, the store is a Mecca for office furnishers, amateur scientists and curious thrifters looking to add a crate of brandy glasses—or perhaps a centrifuge or microscope—to their homes. It’s a win-win situation for all involved: customers nab furniture or conversation pieces (a Coulter counter, for example—vintage Gross Chem), and the department that donated the merchandise reaps 50 percent of the profits.

Terry Overby, the store’s assistant supervisor, has been working at the Surplus Store for 15 years but says the store has been around for a lot longer than that—no one’s really sure how long. He’s watched people walking in and out through the store’s doors—30 to 40 people donate, buy and browse daily—and he says things aren’t quite the same as they used to be.

“It’s changed over the years. When I first came here, a lot of students would come in and buy stuff for their dorms or classes,” he says. “[Now] most people who come in buy stuff for offices.”

Alongside standard-issue coffeemakers lie foreboding contraptions with protruding tubes and knobs and shelves stocked with Erlenmeyer flasks (inset) and other chemistry department remnants worthy of a sci-fi flick or a water bong aficionado. Like any thrift store, the Surplus Store too can instill a sense of nostalgia in browsers. An entire room is nearly full of computers that reached their zeniths in the era of pogs and light-up sneakers. Typewriters and musty textbooks line shelves in another room.

“It’s a good place for discount furniture—stuff that’s actually been used at Duke,” says Durham resident Anita Shaw as she wheels a desk chair to the checkout line, adding she always finds what she’s looking for at perhaps the most eclectic of the University’s establishments.