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One thing that we learned about the small towns in the Rio Grande Valley is that there is no place in the country that has more yard sales.  It seems that everyone has one and they appear to be ongoing.    On weekends, sales pop up in almost every empty parking lot, driveway, or chain link fence.

We couldn’t understand where all of the clothing was coming from.  Mystery solved!!

On the south side of Mission, TX, the roads are lined with “Ropa” stores.  Ropa is the Spanish word for clothing.  There are literally dozens, perhaps hundreds, of stores that sell new and used clothing in bulk.

Here is a typical mall that has at least a dozen of these ropa stores.

This one, like most of the others advertises both used and new apparel.

Inside the store there are racks of clothes that can be purchased individually, but in other stores there are also piles of clothing on the floor which are sold by the pound.  Clothing can also be purchased in  bundles and even skids of bundles as shown below.

On a second visit to the area, with a bunch of women from the park, we delved further into this amazing enterprise.  This location specializes in “Ropa Usada”, used clothes.

Clothes are just piled up high.

Some ladies climbing to the top!!!!

Some people just sit down and look through the pile around them throwing the ones they are not interested in away from them.

A new pile of clothes thrown on the floor by the as the ladies rush over to look through them.

More clothes waiting to be thrown on the pile.

At this location, most of the clothes were used, stained and/or worn out.  Some good bargains are found and if you are into crafts here is lots of cheap material.