I agree Roy. My once thriving town is now almost empty of retail shops, replaced with Charity shops, takeaway or fish & chip shops and Pubs. The council some years ago transformed it into a one way system with no parking except for disabled. We no longer have any of the four Banks that used to serve the town.
The charity shops used to be a good source of figures depending on the scale required. More recently I have found B&M often have boxed sets of figures that are good for Sea Queen size vessels so I have Lieutenant Uhuru steering mine with a couple of Enterprise crew on board.
dave976

Hi we don't have Thrift shops here. We keep chucking things out that are useless but they keep coming back like a recycled secretaire.
Home or Business, energy or transport or whatever.

Thrift is an unusual word in the UK. It is mainly the poor who are thrifty, the rest economise and the A-Z list spend spend spend.
We have charity shops, loads of them in place of businesses not able to cope in current circumstances. We were once known as a nation of shopkeepers. If only!!!

Best figures I found were a Captain Kirk in a disguise visiting the earth of the past and Indiana Jones.
Captain Kirk RIP was lost at sea on one of my fishing boats it was a terrible storm only just got the boat back, lost the catch of course!.
Capt. I Jones took over and with a bit more blue tac around the feet I have high hopes of him. He does look so angry though, he just took the job, never said a word! I was going to tell him he was going to lose his hat if he was not careful but he just glared at me!

Roy

I hit the thrift shops, Value Village, Goodwill and such looking in their used toy section for figures suitable for boats.

Well here in Toronto, Ontario, CANADA it is back-to-school time + Halloween is coming soon.

Figures can be costly, I hav paid $28, & saw one last week that cost $100.

ECONOMICAL: I found this in the DOLLARAMA today. There are 2 other sets along the same line. I'm not familiar with the Harry Potter theme but apparently this gent is Hagrid (10cm/4") with Hermione Granger(7cm) & Fang (5cm). I hav Capt. Jack Sparrow at the wheel of one Springer tug & I can shear off Hagrid at the ankles to get him at the helm of my next Springer.

Hagrid is an imposing figure, he is 5-1/2 cm wide at the elbow.

And of course every ship needs a cat. This is Chloe from The Secret Lives of Animals. She has become portly keeping the rat population down aboard my Springer