Perhaps there was once a stigma attached to buying pre-used items; perhaps people associated it with being poor, or needy. However, such attitudes are fading rapidly \u2013 2025 research from the Centre for Economics and Business Research reports that second-hand products now account for 34 to 45 percent of UK consumer purchases.<\/p>\n
As well as rising living costs, there are increased concerns about waste and sustainability<\/a> \u2013 and, while these are key to why I continue to favour pre-owned things, there\u2019s an emotional aspect to it as well: buying them makes me feel closer to my mother.<\/p>\n With me in London and Mum, who\u2019s no longer able to travel, in Sydney, our opportunities for togetherness are rare. Second-hand shopping was our pastime, even when money wasn\u2019t in short supply. Going to garage sales and markets was a bonding, mutually enjoyable activity. Even now, Mum loves seeing my finds, always praising me for my \u201cgood eye\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019d never know it was only \u00a32; you make everything look a million dollars!\u201d she says admiringly, in that way only mothers can.<\/p>\n \u2018Making her dream a reality\u2019<\/p>\n When I show my purchases to Mum, and list them on our Etsy vintage shop, it feels a little bit like I\u2019m vicariously making her dream shop a reality, albeit only virtually. More importantly, every sale we make goes towards my next airfare home. I called the shop Bevintagebounty \u2013 not only as a reminder to \u201cbe vintage\u201d and try to shop more sustainably in this age of over-consumerism, but also as a way of linking in Mum\u2019s name, Bev.<\/p>\n Vintage resellers and \u201cprofessional thrifters\u201d have huge followings online, and you could easily believe that it\u2019s as simple as scoring a secondhand Le Creuset for a quid and selling it for \u00a330. There\u2019s a bit more to it than that.<\/p>\n For me, obviously, the buying is a doddle, and I\u2019m fairly clued up about what will sell \u2013 but staging, photographing, uploading, listing? So tedious. And the thrill of a sale is often quickly outweighed by hunting for suitable packaging and trudging to the post office. Not to mention the fact that new US customs and tariffs<\/a> have made postage to the market most eager for European finds prohibitive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Perhaps there was once a stigma attached to buying pre-used items; perhaps people associated it with being poor,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[428,84,173245,4203,2864,6648,655,6273,5438,5699,156,56,54,55,157732],"class_list":["post-489423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entrepreneurship","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-clothes-shopping","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-family","tag-life","tag-lifestyle","tag-motherhood","tag-standard","tag-sustainability","tag-tariffs","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-us-content"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}