Harborne is one of those areas that is blessed with both a large number of charity shops and a reasonably well-to-do and educated local community. This makes for occasional rich pickings along the main high street, which has 7 or 8 charity outlets of various denominations. Depending on which end of the High Street you start at, Oxfam will either be the first or last you visit as it is situated at the south end, just opposite the Waitrose supermarket (Harborne has a Waitrose as it's main supermarket - that ought to tell you everything you need to know about the demographics at work here)
The outlet is a fairly standard Oxfam layout and it a mixture of clothes, books and bric-a-brac that the public have donated and a selection of the stock which appears in all Oxfam shops; fair trade coffee, Guatemalan Worry People - you know the type of thing. As there is an Oxfam bookshop at the other end of the High Street, the records and books available here tend to be those that didn't make the cut, but that's not to say you won't find a gem if you're lucky. The same, of course, goes for the clothes and other stock. For the clothes there is a changing cubicle, so you don't have to perform guesswork regarding sizes. read more