Each VV operates as a for profit store that buys product off a more local charity, by weight, which does a bunch of organising collection runs and drop bins etc to get the stuff. So you tend to get a bit of a skew in available items according to the demographics of the charity and locale and individual local decisions on where to put collecting bins etc. So between two Value Villages, they'll have a lot that looks real similar, but have idiosyncrasies in amount of some types of items, and whether they have a lot of older ppl clothes, younger ppl clothes, tall and thin clothes, short and fat clothes etc. This means that neighbouring cities can have widely different selection in some departments. Then also there seems to be a cyclic "stage of life" thing around the core ages of their donors, as various cohorts have kids, move, downsize, retire, die. Which also applies to other thrifts. My area is getting a bit thin for interesting stuff, have had a large influx of ppl from the Big Smoke(s) and they Marie Kondo-ed all their stuff before moving.
Anyhoo, if you find yourself living among the type of ppl who wouldn't have had such hardware, or if they did got rid of it long ago to move there, then yah, local markets are much less likely to turn up what you want. Alternatives are online buying, of course, but semi-online buying might work, meaning local classifieds somewhere more distant, but "easy" to get to... this might be because you visit relatives for a weekend there every month or two, or there's a bus or train that offers cut rate fares to a particular city, (Maybe at certain off peak times) ... or there's a smooth, straight highway right there, where you can set the cruise at fuel economy speed and have a stressless drive listening to your podcasts or fave radio station etc... or some people work a city or two over from where they live, so after work pickups do-able.
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
