Advice for the day: Planning a subversive activity?
Second-hands stores are your best friends because they are consumer information laundering centers.
Pretty much everything you buy online or with a credit card is tracable and trackable. You've seen the crime shows: Some guy is accused of murder, and they find a receipt/transaction for a saw and nitrile gloves, combine that with video footage of him at checkout, and bring him in on charges.
To be clear, I am not suggesting you plan a murder as a subversive activity (I'm more thinking of the times I participated in art projects that could've been considered vandalism).
But my point is that second hand shops launder your purchasing information. Think of what a Goodwill receipt looks like. Even itemized, it just says stuff like "Craft supplies (3), Home goods (1), Clothing (2)," etc.
Now Goodwill is a large, corporate-type interest. It's better/safer than buying off Amazon or in-person at a non-second-hand store, BUT they're big enough that I imagine many do have cameras in-store and at checkout.
The BEST second-hand stores to launder your purchases are individual, non-chain ones, and in my area, church-run ones staffed by old ladies. These are less likely to have high quality security cameras (church ladies either don't know how to set those up or put their faith in the community that no one would steal unless they needed to).
The catch, of course, is that you can never guarantee you'll find what you're looking for on a specific timeline. If you can, keep a list of what you need in your head and play the long game by keeping an eye out.
P.S. All or the above applies to yard sales too. However, yard sale hosts are more likely to be able to remember and identify you because they're seeing a handful of people over one weekend rather than a handful of people every day Mon-Fri, 9-5.
