You'll find something interesting around every corner at the Kent State University Surplus Store. Located at the corner of E.Main Street and Haymaker Parkway, near the Cleveland Bagel Company, the store is only open on Wednesdays from 8:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.
Kent State Today visited the Surplus Store recently to see the variety of things currently being offered for sale. New items are added each week. By their own gauge of a "large" item being "bigger than a bread box," and a "small" being "smaller than a bread box," so far, in 2024, the Surplus Store has sold 2,462 small items and 3,485 large items. "That's a lot of bread boxes," the store posted on their Facebook page. "And thank you!"
The post also included, "We do not gauge our success on the amount of money made, but by the number of items we have kept out of the dumpster!"
The store is operated by University Facilities Managment and represents a commitment by their team and Kent State to the university's strategic priority of organizational sustainability. Items that are no longer needed by the university are offered for sale, to be reused and repurposed, reducing the amount of waste material produced by Kent State.
Three Floors, With Many Rooms
The space inside is broken up into a series of rooms on all three floors of the building. Most of the rooms contain furniture, like chairs, couches/loveseats, tables, shelves and cabinets. Other rooms contain laptops and a variety of connector cords and smaller office supplies.
Books That Are Older Than Kent State
As you descend to the lower level, the staircase is lined with books, many of them bearing the marking "Pre-1900." More books with this label can be found in a side room on the lower level, along with vintage vinyl records. In the central room at the bottom of the stairs, antique maps are spread out and stacked on a large table, with even more maps piled on a nearby side table.
While visiting the store, Kent State Today browsed the furniture and the books and found a few Chestnut Burr yearbooks from the 1960s among the many books that line the store's staircase. The Chestnut Burr was published from 1914 through 1985. Each edition offers a fascinating glimpse into Kent State's past. While these yearbooks are available online through the University Libraries' digital archives, it's a different experience holding a vintage book, browsing through the pages and experiencing the Kent State of a different era.
The travels through time are free, but all the other items at the Kent State Surplus Store – from the practical to the utilitarian to the historical – are clearance priced to move quickly.
