National Second Hand Day, An Experience

nat second hand

 

Secondhand selling site, Preloved has named today, National Second Hand Selling Day.

It is the third annual day and I thought I would share some of my gems that I’ve found.

I’ve used Preloved and other selling sites for years-both to sell things myself and to buy thrifty treasures to upcycle and reuse.

My first bargain was when I bought my first house and got four kitchen chairs for 99p. The people even delivered them for free.

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I stripped them and recovered the seats and Boo still sits on one in our kitchen today.

Staying on the kitchen, when we moved to the farm, I wanted a massive farmhouse table but I was shocked at how expensive they are new.

I managed to bag an enormous 5×5 foot table and six chairs for £20. The most hilarious part of this story was getting it home. I dragged Hubster and we had to negotiate my large car and a trailer up a canal tow path in order to get the table from a house at the end of the path.

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Boo was in the back of the car and there were some hairy moments during that trip and some rather colourful language from Hubster who doesn’t share my love of second hand.

Next up comes the selling. My goodness, you do get some nutters. The worst are when you sell animals which we do quite a lot here-rabbits, chickens-even dogs when one of our farm dogs had puppies.

You get the people who ask you 376 questions over text and then don’t even come to view the animal. The funniest message I got was off someone wanting to ‘swap’ me a 32 inch flat screen TV and an X-Box for a puppy. Needless to say, I said no.

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Then we had the woman who came to get a rabbit and spent three hours here asking questions with me (pregnant at the time and looking after Boo) screaming in my head IT’S A RABBIT.

Just this week, a woman turned up on foot (bear in mind the nearest bus stop is half a mile away) with a pet carrier suitable for a hamster, bought a rabbit, squeezed the creature in and asked for a lift home. Err, no.

We’ve had time wasters whose dog has recently died and they’ve just come to view puppies as some cathartic episode-crying into their fur.

We’ve had a couple come looking at a dog and spent a good three hours here deciding, going home to think more, coming back the next day and spending another two hours here then NOT HAVING THE DOG. Then they came back the day after with a plant to say sorry for wasting our time.

I tell you, it’s a good job I’m patient.

While it is true you can grab yourself a bargain and I continue to look for treasures (chickensand chairs are my favourite search), actually selling things yourself has its drawbacks. Saying that though, it has inspired me to write this blog post and you do get to meet some very interesting people.

 

In my experience, the chicken people have been the best.

What treasures have you bagged?

 

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