Reselling Christmas Edit
eBay Flooded With Unwanted Gifts

Did you get some horrible gifts this year? Tacky stuff? Things you’ll never use? Items you already had? What do you intend to do with them? A new trend sweeping our web savvy society is to pop those items on eBay to make a quick profit.

eBay has even has a special “Unwanted Christmas Present” section on its site. Looking through the items you can almost feel the cringing and awkward hug to grandma, then practically hear the scheming to turn a profit from the tragically practical or 5-years-out-of-date gifts. Items currently up for bid include a Baby Phat cell phone pouch, Ugg boots, and a messenger bag and sock combo.

In the coming days, 1 in every 10 Germans will auction off their unwanted Christmas gifts online according to a BITKOM survey. In a group of 14-29 year olds, 17% planned to make a little extra cash this way. Overall, 13% of men attempt to ditch their gifts for cash while 9% of women do.

About 50% will keep an unwanted gift anyway, about one in three will bring gifts back to the store, and one in five plans on re-gifting something.

Although these are only statistics from Germany, the likelihood this is a common practice in other countries is quite high.