Reselling News: 76 Percent of Americans Bought Something Used This Year, and eBay Live Leaves Your Scorecard October 15

Most weeks the news is a fee or a deadline. This week one of the two items is a picture of your buyer, and it is worth more than it looks.

Three quarters of the country bought used in the last year

The Consumer Collective published Second Nature: The State of Secondhand Shopping in America on October 7, built on an August survey of 400 US shoppers. The headline figure is that 76 percent bought something secondhand in the past 12 months, and 89 percent have done it at some point. Another 44 percent say they are buying more used than they were two years ago, and among Gen Z that rises to 66 percent.

Clothing is still the front door. Seventy one percent of shoppers have bought used clothes, which is the category most of us source every weekend anyway.

The line that should change something about your week is this one: 54 percent of people say they prefer to buy secondhand in a physical store, against 18 percent who prefer online and 28 percent who are fine with either. Read that from behind your own table. The store wins because a rack answers questions for free. A buyer can see the fade on a collar, check a hem, hold a sleeve against an arm, and decide in four seconds without asking anyone a thing.

Your listing has to do that same work on purpose. That means real measurements instead of a size tag, a photo of the actual flaw instead of a sentence admitting one, and a close shot of the fabric and the brand tag. You are not competing with other sellers for those 46 percent who shop online or either way. You are competing with the thrift store down the street, and the only edge you have is that you already did the digging for them.

The report also found 49 percent either buy luxury secondhand or would consider it, with condition and authenticity named as the things holding people back. If you have been leaving better labels on the rack because you assumed nobody trusts a used designer piece online, that assumption is now the thing costing you money. Half the room is open to it and telling you exactly what would close the sale.

eBay Live drops out of seller standards on Wednesday

This one lands October 15. eBay's seller levels and performance standards page states that beginning October 15, 2026, eBay Live transactions will no longer be counted in your seller standards or service metrics calculations, including all transactions completed before that date.

We went through the detail when the notice went out, in the September 16 post. The short version for the five days you have left: it is retroactive, so your Seller Level and Top Rated Plus status on Wednesday get recalculated on a smaller pile of transactions than the one you have been watching. If Live was carrying your numbers, that support is gone. If Live buyers left you with defects, that weight comes off. Either way the arithmetic changes without you touching anything.

Pull your Seller Hub metrics today and work out what share of your transaction count came through Live. That is a ten minute job now and a confusing Wednesday if you skip it.

The takeaway

The survey and the deadline point the same direction. Demand for used goods is broad and getting broader, and almost none of it is automatic. The buyer wants the confidence a rack gives them, and the platform keeps rewriting how it grades you while you work. Both are answered the same way, by knowing your own numbers and writing listings that settle a buyer's doubt before they have to ask. The repeatable system for both is what we build inside The Income Lab.

Hero image: a shopper looking through a secondhand shop, photo by Rex Roof, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.