In the video, you see a woman holding two drinking glasses at a thrift store and the person filming asks, "Can you explain the difference between crystal and not crystal — how do we know?"
The woman responds, "So the way to check to see if something is pure crystal or just blown glass or regular glass is to do the thump test."
She continues, explaining, "You hit your finger (on the glass) and if it just goes to a ring like that, it's glass. The difference with crystal is you're going to hear that ring like a bell chime."
She then goes on to say that the crystal glass she is holding is $1 and likely is an expensive crystal brand.
BuzzFeed spoke to the woman filming the video named Carissa. "I have been thrifting since 2014 while I was attending college because I couldn’t afford to shop anywhere else for business school. The person in the video is my thrift sista Theresa," she said.
Carissa said the crystal glass in the video is a Mikasa glass and they are no longer sold. "They can run about $200 for a set of four and I paid $1 for the one in the video."
And, online, I actually found that ONE single old-fashioned Mikasa glass can run you about $100!
But things like expensive drinking glasses are just one example of many expensive things that people bypass in thrift stores. "Honestly, I feel all things are overlooked in the thrift store because people simply don’t want to go in them 'cause they don’t think they can find things or it looks overwhelming to them."
So, if 2024 is the year you take up thrifting, you can start warming up by doing the "thump test" during your next visit!
