Hi everyone - thank you again for all your good wishes. This means a lot to me.
Home again after a marathon opshoppery - haul includes: two (two!) gucci sweaters in my size, one black one blue. Some tailored winter wool trousers in black. All in good nick. Am sorted this winter and probably next. A rather beautiful carnival glass ashtray which I will use as a housekeys dumpspot. Some nice costume jewellery - a brass chain necklace of thin ceramic plaques hand painted with autumn leaves, a brooch made from a small turtle shell (sans turtle) with I think gold fittings and a couple of rock crystal necklaces that I am going to repurpose at some point in the future. I do like Reservoir for opshoppery, and Essendon is stupendous - I had no idea the opshops were so good there. Definitely worth a trip out to that part of town. Fitzroy & Collingwood and Thornbury were all a bit disappointing.
Nice find! Very jelly of the sweaters and trousers.
Fitzroy through to even Preston these days has gentrified to the point that the op shops aren't worth it. Essendon is much more of a hidden gem that way, hipsters never think of it! Reservoir is still scungey enough but I think it's basically the next Preston
Coburg North most definitely has been breached and I think Pascoe Vale has too. The M80 is the new fence... based on the style and pattern of the developments in the suburbs beyond though, I would be very surprised if the hipsters (in itself an outdated term now, again...) made it there. Much more car dependent and fewer mixed use/retail spaces compared to the postwar areas.