Reselling Christmas Edit

eBay Flooded With Unwanted Gifts
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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awkward hug to grandma, then practically hear the scheming to turn a profit from the tragically practical or 5-years-out-of-date gifts.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.