The Reselling Baby Boom

So we brought up this article, like, I don't know, a few months ago.

But I keep seeing the same ongoing, recurring theme.

And I'm just interested in the live, like I would love to hear what people thought about this, like is this true? But basically this idea that we're gonna be entering a boom when it comes to thrift stores and it comes to estate sales, uh, when it comes to pretty much people offloading their donations.

And it's a result of the Boomer generation.

Like, now they're up in age, they don't know what to do with their stuff, and so now they're gonna be offloading things.

And I thought this was interesting 'cause it's a very different episode.

Like, in most episodes you see in reselling is about like, "Hey, we're gonna be entering the golden age of reselling," right? That like clothing's gonna keep going up and people are gonna keep buying.

We're actually going the other angle, that there's gonna be tons of stuff, and now it's gonna be about sorting through those items and being able to pick up those items.

Now Mike, before I get into the article real quick, what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I mean, that's something we've talked about even before those articles were coming out.

Um, you know, many times on the podcast we've talked about g- generations are important.

And for a long time what has made eBay pretty successful is, um, the Boomer generation and Gen X really kind of latched onto the, the auction model when eBay first came out.

They found eBay as like a, a, a amazing site to do things on.

And eBay, we've said, hasn't always adapted to like the younger generation coming up, and it necessarily hasn't had to do that, like instantly, because the younger generation doesn't have the money and the resources that the older generation does.

Now, the flip side of that is as that older generation is going and, and we see our culture shifting and changing, you know, rapidly, even technology-wise, all of these things are happening very, very quickly.

But one of the, the outcomes of this is you're going to have the biggest generation to have ever existed in the United States over the, the period of like a decade and a half, two decades, passing away.

And as they're leaving, they're leaving their estates, they're leaving, um, they're leaving s- just stuff, right? Like, the, they're, we're gonna have so many things.

Estate sales are gonna be booming.

Garage sales are gonna be booming.

Thrift stores are gonna be getting just tons and tons of things.

Now, Orlando, I think you're right when it comes to the, the skill is gonna come in for resellers of filtering through those things, like what is actually valuable, what's not.

Because let's be honest, that generation also was one of the first generations, the Boomer generation, to be able to get mass-produced things.

And so of course if something is vintage and it's old, a lot of times there's, there's some intrinsic value there just because it's older, it's not being made anymore.

But you know, you can tell the difference in generations just when you walk into the house.

You know, the, the Boomer generation, the Gen X generation, a lot of times there were a lot more things on the walls, knick-knacks, carpets, lots of things.