Last week’s column was a basic introduction to the fine art of thrift shopping. If there were a college major called Don’t Be A Moron Shopper, that column would’ve been a course labeled, Thrift Shops 101. Continuing in the same vein, this column is Thrift Shops 303, since it goes into my favorite indoor sport in detail.

The issue of thrift shops involves much more than meets the eye. For sure, it’s not as complicated as writing a Beethoven symphony or planning and executing the D-Day invasion. But to achieve mastery in this fine art, one needs to acquire a vast range of knowledge and skills.

First and foremost is attitude. After you decide to go on a thrift shop adventure, but before you leave your digs, you need the philosophic acceptance of a Zen monk. The phrase, “The usefulness of the cup lies in its emptiness,” attributed to Bruce Lee and based on Taoist teachings, should be your guide.

Since life offers no guarantees, neither can thrift shops. Thus, you can’t have any expectations of The Big Score, or any score at all. All you can count on is the journey. So open your mind, your heart, your eyes and breathe. And if that ain’t philosophic, I don’t know what is.

Let’s say you’re at the thrift shop (or if you prefer, Ye Olde Thrift Shoppe), you’ve gone through it a couple of times, but you’ve found nothing you like. What then?

Clearly, that’s a thrift shop (henceforth designated TS) newbie’s question … and issue. And a very NON-Zen newbie at that.

You didn’t find anything you liked? Big deal.

Or if you want to apply Zen philosophy, it’s no deal at all.

Really, in terms of the cosmos, you don’t even exist. So your disappointment at failed acquisitiveness is so insignificant that I won’t waste any of the precious time I have left on Terra even considering it. But because I’m a model of compassion, I will share with you what I’d do.

First, take another pass around the store. This time, slowly and deliberately, not merely scanning the merch, but truly taking it in. In other words, open your eyes and mind at the same time. The thing is, when most peeps go thrifting, their scans are just cursory. A quick look here, a quick look there and they move on. So they notice only the obvious, and so will you. Yeah, sure, you’ll see the grandfather clock or the chainsaw or the bazooka. But by thinking and looking “big,” you’ll miss smaller, more interesting (and maybe more valuable) treasures, time after time after time.

But let’s say you went over the entire joint with a fine-tooth comb three times and STILL didn’t find anything that floated your boat? Do you just declare your campaign over and quit?

Did Napoleon quit after getting his tuchas first frozen and then royally stomped in Russia? Mais NON! (That he SHOULD have is a separate issue. Luckily, a TS expedition will have nothing in common with Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, except maybe for you finding a cannonball scrounged from the Battle of Borodino, gathering dust behind a B&W console TV from the 60s.

But assuming you missed the cannonball, do you just do a Bonaparte DE-parte, abandon the field of honor and slink away with nary a backwards glance? Only, if like Napoleon, you lack a conscience and consideration for your compatriots and allies. But since you, unlike Napoleon, care about your friends, you’ll maintain your mission and look for treasures for them.

(A vital Seide note: Because a TS adventure is not only about you and your wants, you should know your fellow TS friends’ sizes and tastes, so if you see things you don’t like but they would, you can snag them.) But what if you found nothing for you AND nothing for your friends? Ah, herein lies the true beauty of TS’s.

It is best paraphrased from a famous JFK quote: “Ask not what the thrift shop can do for you — ask what you can do for the thrift shop.”

This is why all TS lovers may come back from the TS empty-handed, but they never go there like that. Instead, they always make sure to take some stuff to donate on each trip. This will make for a fourfold success.

First, your stuff is going to make someone else’s TS trip a success.

Second, it’ll make some cash for the TS.

Third, you’ll make room in your closet for future TS scores.

And fourth, you’ll enjoy the well-known Thrift Shopper’s irony of taking something back that you bought there a long time ago and never once touched.

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Rave faves

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Now let’s get to the real nitty-gritty: What are my favorite TS’s?

To riff on Benjamin Franklin’s famous quote, “There never was a good war, or a bad peace,” there are no good retail stores, or bad thrift shops. And this is especially true within the Blue Line. Our TS’s have wonderful all-volunteer staff, great stuff, prices that are almost 19th-century and they donate their profits to charities.

That said, my Holy Trinity are The Riverside Thrift Store in Wilmington (known among the cognoscenti as Wilmart), Go Fish (behind Will Rogers) and Thrifty and Nifty, in my second-favorite town, Maudit! Tupper Lake. I think in terms of size, Wilmart and Go Fish are roughly the same; Thrifty and Nifty is the biggest. Hours are Mon. and Weds. 10-2 for Wilmart and Go Fish; Thrifty and Nifty is open 10-4 Weds. through Saturday.

One advantage of Thrifty and Nifty it’s right across the street from The Washboard Donut Shoppe, the combination laundromat/donut shop that, in this Dope’s not-so-humble opinion, has the best donuts anywhere.

One final note about TS’s. Do NOT ever mistake a TS with any place that calls itself either a consignment or a vintage shop — especially in bigger cities. To use a quaint Brit quote, they are as alike as chalk and cheese. The selections are consistently more “high end,” and so are the prices. Which, to me, takes all the fun out of it. Besides, you just know the vintage shop owners got their stuff from thrift shops, so essentially they’re an even bigger bunch of price-gougers than the retail stores.

A perfect example of the cultural disconnect between Adk. TS lovers and the city types took place within my own family. It’s a chapter of my life I’m ashamed to reveal, but will do so only to illustrate my point.

My nephew and niece and their two daughters visited My Home Town this past summer. The girls, 15 and 17, are thrift shoppers, but of the metropolitan ilk: They live in Park Slope, Brooklyn and have Gothamite values. Nonetheless, the girls love the thrift stores here, so every visit here is an occasion of state.

My niece and nephew, being Urbanites of the First Water, take inordinate pride in their never carrying cash. I don’t fully cop to their reasoning, but from what I infer, shlepping a bunch of cash around (like an old school fool like me) is about as outre as drinking beer from the bottle or using a bandana for a snot rag, let alone referring to it as a snot rag (all of which I do, by the way).

So L’il Becky, I and the girls made a pilgrimage to Go Fish. LB and I didn’t find anything we liked, so we waited outside while the girls stayed on the hunt. A while went by and the girls came out and told LB the God-awful news: The store didn’t take credit cards! No credit cards? Horror of horrors!

In such desperate straits, they could avail themselves of only one desperate measure — hit Uncle Dope up for some long green.

LB said, “Would you give them two twenties, please?”

“Two twenties?” I said. “For what?”

“So they can pay for their stuff,” she said.

I decided, city girl that she is and so far gone, I’d say nothing. Instead, I just forked over the two double-sawbucks.

The girls went back inside. A minute later, they came out, both of them with big smiles, two bags of treasures and my change, which was one 20, one 10 and four singles. That’s right: They got two big bags of priceless stuff for a mere three bills apiece.

I didn’t say anything to my niece. Instead, I just counted the change in front of her — slowly, clearly and very, very loud.