Found Contest: Imagine the Future of Thrift Stores

Found Found: Grocery Store Circular From the Future More Artifacts From the Future Wired magazine’s Found page represents our best guess at what lies over the horizon, from touchscreen windshields to organ farming. Now, we’re inviting readers to help create Found pages: What do you think our world will look like in 10, 20, or […]
Photo illustration Brita d'Agostino
Photo illustration: Brita d'Agostino

FoundFound: Grocery Store Circular From the FutureMore Artifacts From the FutureWired magazine's Found page represents our best guess at what lies over the horizon, from touchscreen windshields to organ farming. Now, we're inviting readers to help create Found pages: What do you think our world will look like in 10, 20, or 100 years?

Each month, we'll propose a scenario and present some ideas and concepts. Then it's up you: Sketch out your vision and upload your ideas (below). We'll use the best suggestions as inspiration for a future Found page, giving kudos to contributors, and we'll add our favorite submission to this story.

This month's assignment: Imagine the future of thrift stores. What sort of unusual and once-useful items will you find in the 99-cent bin in 2043? (Or wait, maybe the discount bins will be $99 by then...) Will impossibly bulky old inch-thick 3-D TV be free with a purchase of a pair of shoes? Will you fish through a bin of iPhones to get that battered copy of Suri Cruise's tell-all biography?

You can send us your ideas in text form, but we're keen on getting visual entries. Check out these links to some CC-licensed photos on Flickr of awesome (and not so awesome) thrift stores to fire up your imagination:

Thrift store exterior

Cast-off cassettes

Thrift store find

Collection of TVs

Discount food bin

Discount bin

Thrift store clothes

Thrift store interior

Use the Reddit widget below to submit your best idea and vote for your favorite. The image must be your own — submitting it gives us permission to use it on Wired.com and in Wired magazine. Please submit relatively large images (ideal size is 800 to 1,200 pixels, or larger on the longest side). Include a description of your idea and how you made it.

We don't host the images, so upload it somewhere else and submit a link to it. If you're using Flickr, Picasa or another photo-sharing site to host your image, provide a link to the image, not to the photo page where it's displayed. If your photo doesn't show up, it's because the URL you have entered is incorrect. Make sure it ends with the image file name (xxxxxxx.jpg).

Check back over the next few weeks to vote on new submissions, and look for an update announcing our favorite.

This contest is now closed.