If there’s one thing that brings all sorts of Mainers together, it’s the love of a good bargain. Rich, poor, young, old, male, female, whatever — if you can find that thing you’ve been wanting for the right price, you’re a happy camper.
Which is why it’s not surprising that the New Bangor/Brewer Area Swap and Sell group on Facebook boasts nearly 16,000 members from all economic and social backgrounds. Everybody’s looking for a deal, whether it’s in that group or in any of the other swap and sell groups specific to the Bangor area.
On a given day, those perusing the group might find anything from a solid maple armoire to eight-point deer antlers; from full-season DVD sets of season five and six of “Quantum Leap” to commemorative “Lord of the Rings” movie light-up drinking goblets. There’s prom dresses, used cars, old iPhones, rototillers, panini presses, grass-fed ground beef, hand-picked wild mushrooms, 4-wheelers, an unopened case of bottles of shampoo, breast milk pumps, six acres of land in Greenbush, and fully-functional Victrola hand-crank phonographs.
In short: everything. If you’re looking for a bargain, you’ll find it on Swap and Sell, a group that’s open to folks living no further north than Lincoln, and no further south and west than Winterport or Bucksport.
One of the people that manages the group’s near-constant stream of posts on both New Bangor/Brewer Area Swap and Sell and on a number of other Bangor region buy and sell groups is Cristina Thurston. She is one of the admins who has the nearly full-time task of making sure the groups are easy to read, relevant to only the Bangor region, and — mostly — drama-free.
“Honestly, even I can’t believe some of the things people post on there,” said Thurston, 48, a native of Alton who now lives in Old Town. “There’s everything. I mean everything. There’s fights. Most people are really nice, but sometimes people can be a little nasty. It’s a little crazy. It’s a lot of work.”
A few years back, Thurston developed heart problems, leaving her unable to work in her former profession as a medical secretary. After going from working 60 hours a week to not working at all, she began to go stir crazy, so Thurston decided in 2009 to start and manage and buy and sell group in Milford. Then she started one for Old Town. And then, when the old Bangor/Brewer Area Swap and Sell group shut down in 2012 after its former admins got tired of the constant demands of managing the site, Thurston started the “New” Bangor/Brewer Area Swap and Sell.
“I’ve always been good with computers, and I’m good at keeping things organized,” said Thurston. “Facebook changes every two weeks. There’s always a different way to add pictures or format pictures or delete things. I’ve really got to stay up to date on how they change it.”
She now manages ten Bangor area groups in total, including Just Clothes, Just Kids Stuff, Just Women’s Stuff and Just Men’s Stuff, all geared towards specific groups of people, which lessens the clutter of the main Bangor/Brewer site. Thurston says more than half of the posts on that group are clothes, which infuriates a large percentage of the overall members.
“Oh, half of them would be thrilled if nobody ever posted clothes again. And then there are people that love it. And if you ask people what they want, you can expect some really nice comments, and you can expect the meanest comments you can imagine,” said Thurston. “Now, if people post more than five pieces of clothing per day, I just delete stuff.”
There are a few basic rules in the group — namely, treat others as you’d want to be treated, and if you’re the first person to express your own personal interest in an item by commenting on a post, you have first dibs. People can sell anything they’d like, with a few exceptions. Among the only things Thurston doesn’t allow to be sold are firearms — it’s controversial, and the risk of being the means by which someone purchased a gun and then did something illegal are just too high for comfort — and adult-themed items or drug paraphernalia. And, of course, stolen goods.
“I keep an eye on all the sites in the area for people that might be selling stolen goods or scamming people,” she said. “I work with loss prevention agents from the [Bangor] Mall and from some other big stores and they’ll alert me if they find out something has been stolen. I’ve worked with the police. Sometimes, folks will delete stuff if they know I’m onto them. But I get screenshots. You’ve got to be pretty dumb to post that stuff on Facebook.”
For the most part, though, people are well-behaved — and in many cases, they are generous and thoughtful. Thurston and the other admins in September do back to school clothing drives from group members for two deserving families in the area, and they also will gather household items for families that have lost homes in fires, or that are experiencing serious illness or injury.
“People donate free goods. People are entrepreneurs, too, and will offer their services or stuff they’ve made. It’s a really great forum for that kind of thing,” said Thurston. “I’ve met some really terrific people on this site.”
