Fans liken it fondly to indoor Dumpster-diving, a feeding frenzy for the starved of stuff and an addiction waiting to happen if it hasn’t already.

Goodwill of Colorado’s Outlet Center is all those things and more — an end-of-the-line ecosystem and mortal reminder that when we shop ’til we drop, we leave a heck of a lot behind.

Some of those items can be snapped up for pennies on the dollar, “buy the pound,” at Colorado Springs’ most unusual bargain outlet, which opened in 2014 off South Academy Boulevard.

“In many ways what you find is like Goodwill anywhere … everything from complete garbage to brand new items. The shopping experience is different, more like a treasure hunt. And the price is right,” said regular outlet shopper Loyal Olsen.

While the eco-conscious gathered for Earth Day trash-cleanups and nature walks, shoppers at this last-chance retail rodeo for tons of donated items in Southern Colorado celebrated the second R of the eco-trinity (“Reduce, Reuse, Recycle”) in fitting, frenetic and frugal fashion.

As happens roughly every 20 minutes or so during opening hours, a Goodwill outlet employee in a blue and yellow safety vest wheeled a cart down the center aisle of the retail side of this 100,000-square-foot building, unspooling a caution rope that shall not be crossed, lest ye earn a stern rebuke (or ousting for repeated offenses).

A new flotilla loaded with textiles or hard goods — trash, treasures and everything in between — would be docking shortly. Picked-over bins were whisked away. Shoppers who knew the drill, meaning pretty much everyone here at 1 p.m. on a weekday, queued up behind the worn yellow lines on the floor as, one by one, 4-by-8-foot bins laden with fresh old wares were steered into place, two abreast, five deep.

Craning of necks is accepted, aggressive pointing frowned upon, and plucking or touching a definite no-no until the official OK is given.

SHOP!

And it’s like someone fired up a giant rototiller with arms for blades. Plush toys, purses, and anything else in the way, fly as bargain hunters dig. The crash and shatter of breaking things spikes the air, and the nerves.

There’s a good reason children under 16 aren’t allowed at the outlet, and gloves are highly recommended.

“Some of the customers, they’re here all the time and they know what they’re looking for and ready to ‘buy’,” said Brian Robinson, Goodwill of Colorado’s “salvage and sustainability” specialist. “I think they call it competitive shopping.”

Occasionally, full-contact shopping.

“Sometimes it gets to where we have to intervene, we have to tell them, hey, if you guys aren’t going to be respectful of other people’s space, you’re not going to be able to shop here,” Robinson said. “We have to kind of reel them in a little bit and keep them in line.”

For the most part, despite the energy, shrapnel and soundtrack, this bizarre bargain bazaar is a navigable and congenial affair, so long as you follow the rules.

And the deals literally feel like a steal.

“You’re going to come here and never be able to shop anywhere else in your life,” said assistant manager, and off-the-clock Goodwill patron, Morgaine Taylor. “It will ruin you.”

She means that in the best of ways.

Donations to the nonprofit Goodwill of Colorado are tagged and offered for deeply discounted resale at one of the state’s 42 (soon, 43, when a new location opens in Falcon later this year) retail thrift stores.

If no one snaps them up after about six weeks, and a series of markdowns, they’re pulled and sent to an outlet to be sorted and, unless culled by a picker (we’ll get to that), ultimately sold by the pound — $1.69 for textiles, 79 cents for kitchen wares, 49 cents for linens — and 69 cents each for books and other media. Outlet offerings can also include items donated directly to the South Academy store. Individually-priced pieces of furniture and heavier items can be found in an area off the main retail floor.

Post-spring cleaning and school summer break traditionally are donation and shopping boom times.

“We’ll do $10,000 days at $1.69 or less a pound. That’s a lot coming through, people with cartloads,” said store manager Sharon Kelly-Reyes. “We have resellers that specifically buy only clothing, or buy only shoes, or buy other very specific things. … They know what they’re looking for, and we know them.”

Not every regular is a reseller, though.

Some are browsing for meditation and inspiration. Some, thrifting on behalf of those who can’t do it themselves.

Don Moore is here for at least eight hours a day, shopping when new bins arrive, and taking a break to refuel in between.

On this late March day, he was taking lunch on a camping chair by his lode-so-far, a decorative brass flugelhorn (“I don’t think it’s for playing”), vintage clock, and foot-tall R2D2 model he wasn’t quite sure what to do with.

“There’s a guy who comes in here who’s really into ‘Star Wars.’ He’ll know what it’s good for,” said Moore.

Margarete Shuri said she tries to stop into the outlet whenever she can, often to find items to send to family members living in Cameroon.

“When I have time, I come and peek. When I have time, I come and buy,” said Shuri. “There’s always something different, something good.”

Each wave of fresh “boats” remains on the sales floor for at least two hours before being whisked forever away from prying eyes, back to the operations side of this massive facility to meet its next chapter. Most items that don’t sell at the outlet have reached the end of their local provenance, but not their life.

In 2023, Goodwill of Colorado received 248 million pounds of donated items, 84% of which it was able to keep from landfills, said “brand and buzz” manager Stephanie Bell.

Unsold donated items that can be reused or remade, in whole or parts — electronics, metal, glass — are sorted and sent to partner agencies for salvage or recycle.

Unsold clothes and linens are bundled into 1,200-pound bales of “mixed bag textiles” and auctioned off, by the truckload, to buyers worldwide.

“That’s a big part that people don’t know that we do. They think the stuff comes off the sales floor and magically goes into a compactor. That’s not what happens at all,” Kelly-Reyes said.

The South Academy store and donation center is one of four Goodwill outlets in Colorado, and the only one outside the Denver metro area.

Many fans say it’s the best, even with its two staff “pickers” culling donations for higher-value items to list for sale online, at GoodwillFinds.com

Gems such as the pristine 1959 Barbie doll, in the original box, with all her outfits and accessories, that sold for $10,000.01 in an online auction in 2022.

Donors sometimes know they’re gifting a valuable item to charity; that was their intention. More often, how a former prized possession — heirlooms and antiques, Coach and Kate Spade — ends up at Goodwill is a mystery.

“It’s pretty amazing what will slip through the cracks, what people won’t think is valuable and donate, and then in turn we’ll find it, list it online and it will sell,” Robinson said. “Our pickers are good at what they do.”

But with the head-spinning volume constantly flowing through the outlet — donations statewide increased almost 270% between 2013 and 2023, said Bell — pickers can’t possibly pick through everything.

And maybe what they’re picking isn’t what you seek.

As he finished lunch and prepared to head back to the fray, regular shopper Don Moore said he never knows what he’ll go home with after a day at the outlet, and that’s just fine.

Whatever ends up for sale by the pound in the big bins, he always gets the thing he really comes here for.

“It’s good people … good therapy, gets me out of the house and keeps me moving,” Moore said. “And you never know what you’ll find.”

Or what you might miss, if you don’t show up to shop.