> I've heard more than one co-worker or family member refer to buying pre-owned goods as "buying someone else's problem."
Well, products just aren't built to last these days. Just take electronic devices... for phones, if it's not an iPhone and maybe a flagship Samsung, after two years the resale value isn't much because it's either bent and scratched to hell or it won't get any more software update. For laptops it's just the same. After 2-3 years, unless it's Apple, usually the battery is shot, the hinges are worn out and the plastic body next to the touchpad is as discolored as the keyboard is.
Cars are also pretty bad. It's either "buy a new car and risk a lemon" or "buy an used car and pay the difference to a new car in repair costs", and on top of that the second-hand car market is pretty dead. You can't do much in terms of repair yourself any more on any car younger than 10-15 years when cars started to be hyper-crash-optimized computers on wheels, with a shrunken chemical factory attached to the exhaust port.
Furniture, even worse. Almost nothing is made from real raw cut lumber any more for weight and cost reasons, it's all sawdust and glue... or in IKEA's newest trend, cardboard.
Clothing for adults, that's the worst, the fast fashion/shein/... crap completely tanked the market. The stuff that you get offered is falling apart after maybe two washes.
The places where second hand still rocks are the ones where either the market is slooow moving (ham radios) or baby stuff because babies grow out of stuff and need new stuff so fast that it doesn't really make sense.
Well, products just aren't built to last these days. Just take electronic devices... for phones, if it's not an iPhone and maybe a flagship Samsung, after two years the resale value isn't much because it's either bent and scratched to hell or it won't get any more software update. For laptops it's just the same. After 2-3 years, unless it's Apple, usually the battery is shot, the hinges are worn out and the plastic body next to the touchpad is as discolored as the keyboard is.
Cars are also pretty bad. It's either "buy a new car and risk a lemon" or "buy an used car and pay the difference to a new car in repair costs", and on top of that the second-hand car market is pretty dead. You can't do much in terms of repair yourself any more on any car younger than 10-15 years when cars started to be hyper-crash-optimized computers on wheels, with a shrunken chemical factory attached to the exhaust port.
Furniture, even worse. Almost nothing is made from real raw cut lumber any more for weight and cost reasons, it's all sawdust and glue... or in IKEA's newest trend, cardboard.
Clothing for adults, that's the worst, the fast fashion/shein/... crap completely tanked the market. The stuff that you get offered is falling apart after maybe two washes.
The places where second hand still rocks are the ones where either the market is slooow moving (ham radios) or baby stuff because babies grow out of stuff and need new stuff so fast that it doesn't really make sense.