Secondhand shopping can be an extremely fun and fulfilling hobby, but not everyone can access physical stores. This is where online thrifting comes in for all your clothing, jewelry, camera, and other used-goods needs!
Although I’m relatively new to the online secondhand shopping scene, I’ve been learning for the past two years and feel ready to share this plethora of knowledge (I also have a dad who self-certifies himself as an “eBay shopping master,” so take that however you will).
Here’s how I navigate my favorite online thrifting platforms and what they’re useful for:
eBay
eBay is my absolute favorite place to shop online. You can find, figuratively, anything you could ever possibly want on this platform. I’ve had the greatest luck finding great deals on digital cameras, K-pop albums, and gaming figurines.
The “vintage” (in quotes because I was born in 2006 and my childhood cameras being considered old confuses my brain) digital camera scene is completely booming right now, with every girl wanting one to take beautiful, aesthetic pictures of their lives. I just found an amazing deal on eBay for my recent buy, a Fujifilm FinePix s1800, for around $30, when they usually sell for around $150!
So, let me stop gatekeeping. Here are my top tips for navigating eBay: It’s an online bidding platform, so watch those bids closely! I search for whatever I’m looking for in the search bar and sort by “ending soonest.” If I find my item with 30 minutes left and a significantly lower price than expected, I wait out that bid until the last 30 seconds. I bid a dollar more, and bam! I’ve won the bid for cheap.
The biggest trick to bidding on eBay is waiting. You don’t want to get into a bidding war with someone and end up $50 over the base price. If none are ending soon, I just save the item to my watchlist and repeat it when the time gets near!
Finding exact stores can be helpful, too. If I find one selling an album for cheap, for example, I go into the store’s page and see what else they’re selling for that cheap. I won’t gatekeep the store I use for K-pop albums, either. It’s called “Goldstar Tech,” and they sell all sorts of gaming merch, technology, and albums (yes, even Taylor Swift) for starting bids of $0.99.
A warning I have with eBay is to watch the shipping prices. Some stores have high prices that will turn my $15 digital camera into a $50 one.
Depop
I have to be completely transparent with all of you. I have the most toxic relationship with Depop. In my opinion, it’s turned into a haven for overpriced resellers and those trying to mark SHEIN as “high-quality, vintage” clothing. That isn’t to say I haven’t found my current favorite dress on Depop and continue to find other cute pieces of clothing.
For Depop, you have to utilize a combination of many different tricks to find clothes worth buying, but they’re all super fun to do by themselves, too!
I let Depop know what I like by feeding it into my algorithm. The platform is a social media space for clothes, so treat it like a TikTok or Instagram feed! I save the clothes I like through searches, stores, and featured feeds while clicking on anything I find mildly interesting.
With a feed, I usually go into the “$20 and under” and “You might like these” sections of the homepage. The more lower-priced clothes I click on and save, the more Depop shows, and vice-versa for higher-priced. My best finds on Depop have also been found through specific sellers I love and those sellers’ saved items if they have them available.
Building your feed on Depop is so much fun and can lead to plenty of amazing pieces to shop for.
Etsy
Although it’s not a “secondhand shopping platform,” per se, Etsy is where I get all of my jewelry if it doesn’t come from an FSU Market Wednesday booth. It’s an amazing place to find sturdy pieces, especially for us hypoallergenic girlies, but it’s become trickier and trickier to traverse.
Now, waves of drop sellers are coming to Etsy to sell their low-quality, not-at-all handmade goods. What I do is find sellers away from the actual platform of Etsy, like Instagram. There are plenty of individuals advertising their crafts on their social media profiles, so I find someone who interests me online and follow the Etsy link in their bio.
I also use Etsy’s search feature to find specific items. I recently wanted the ring the protagonist Nana wears in the anime series of the same name, so I searched “Nana ring.” Sound simple? Well, when I do this, I also make sure to “reverse image search” any listings I see to make sure that pictures of the item aren’t directly ripped from fast-fashion sites like Temu and SHEIN.
Now that you know the tips and tricks I use for my favorite online, secondhand, and handmade shopping platforms, feel free to try them out!
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