For much of the clothes-buying I have done and do as an adult, for myself or for my children, I shop used first. There are exceptions: undies, socks, bathing suits, and First Communion outfits. Over the years, I've identified my favorite thrift stores, although I wouldn't go to them now because of the pandemic.
I also used to buy a lot of kitchen ware from thrift stores and garage sales, though the selection has become paltry in the last five or ten years.
I have always appreciated the ecological value of avoiding new manufacture, and of keeping something still useful out of landfill.
Everybody knows that once you drive a brand-new car off the lot, it immediately depreciates in value by about 10%.
In my car-buying biography, with one exception--when we bought a white van with phony wood paneling from a used car dealership--I have never had car payments—a big upside of not buying new. My current used car is 21 years old (old enough to go into a bar and order her own Pabst Blue Ribbon), and completely meets my needs.
Books were something I really liked to purchase new, though I've gotten away from that. I liked being the first person to read a given volume, and I liked being able to dog-ear and mark it up the way I wanted to, without any prior reader's input. Also tools. I'm kind of suspicious of used power tools, but I think if I were more knowledgeable about them, I could better assess their condition and value, and I wouldn't need to be suspicious.
But I'll tell you what: I've never been more convinced of the value of buying used than I am now, as I've been putting so much stuff up for sale on Mercari and Facebook Marketplace and Amazon Marketplace.
What I learned quickly is that a thing that I bought ten years ago—that candleholder or that math curriculum or that book or that game—is definitely not going to fetch what I originally paid for it. Like the car that loses value as soon as it leaves the lot, pretty much everything, even if in mint condition, even if still shrink-wrapped, is going to go for less on the used market than it was first acquired for.
There are a couple of exceptions that prove the rule. Maybe a book will go out of print, making it more valuable. Or Patagonia will stop making the only pair of pants that looks good on me, making them incredibly valuable.
But that's rare.
For me, there are two lessons embedded in this:
1. I really need to think about whether I truly want something before buying it, because once that money is spent it's gone bye-bye, and I probably won't recoup the $$ if I don’t want that thing I bought any more, or if I find that I never really use it.
2. If it can possibly be arranged, once I've decided I do truly want something, it's probably best to try to find it used first. This will probably mean waiting, but if I can build patience into the system, things will often turn up eventually. As long as I look regularly, and as long as I look in the right places.