Looking for a Good Home
Pushchair Arsenal
I was up early this morning and it wasn’t because of Little Miss. I was worrying about my blog (slight theme issues yesterday caused everything to go a bit crazy…please let me know if you can’t read this!) and also fretting about a Baby Sale that I was participating in. No, they weren’t selling babies…it was selling nearly-new baby gear to lovely families. And let me tell you, I’m looking for a good home for quite a few things.
As many of you know, I am the Pushchair Queen. I have the tiara to prove it! I have had the pleasure of testing over 20 pushchairs in the last year for review for MadeForMums website and my own blog. One of the “perks” of testing & reviewing these pushchairs (and other items) is that you usually get to keep the item. It’s your compensation for your effort in many cases. After trial runs on various terrains and situations you are left with a fairly perfect pushchair either to keep, auction off, donate or sell on. I have many pushchairs now. Currently there are 5 pushchairs in the garage, 1 in my vehicle and 1 in hubbies vehicle. 7 pushchairs in total.
I put 4 pushchairs in a sale at the beginning of June. Do you think they wanted the state-of-the-art one with the mp3 player jack & speakers? No, they bought the Mothercare Myleene Klass Baby K piece of tat! View the spectacle below…ack!
Baby K stands for Krap?
Bleurgh! Well, at least it went to a good home right? My good friend Sabina and I participated in another Nearly-New sale today. I had high aspirations and was thinking that if I made £50 on the day I would be pretty darn pleased. I brought a few of Little Miss’ toys from babyhood, some books and 2 pushchairs. These pushchairs are in pristine condition, have only been used minimally for the purpose of trial/testing and have been valeted by my rather-obsessive husband. They’re GORGEOUS. I’m selling them for less than half of their RRP! Do you think I managed to sell them?
NO! They came back home to the garage which has been their home for quite some time now. Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Duh, woman, just eBay them!” Well, I have tried to eBay a pushchair or two. I put the Seed Pli on eBay as a charity fundraiser. The Seed Pli retails for just under £800! What do you think it went for on eBay? £200! 1/4 of it’s retail value! Scandal. I sold a Graco Travel System minus the changing bag for £57! It was only 6 months old. More scandal. I know as a new mum, I didn’t want 2nd hand anything for my baby. The only thing we had that was 2nd hand was a Moses basket from my hubby’s uncle. I wanted everything to be new and shiny for my first baby. I think I know better now though.
Part of my problem with eBay is that it’s rather labour intensive to list an item. It takes forever to get the information up and running and there are fees that come out of your eyeballs! It’s a tricky business pricing your item as well. If you start too low and set a reserve you might never meet the reserve and then your item doesn’t sell. If you start too high no one will bid on your item and it won’t sell. Your standards end up being dramatically lowered and the money that goes in your pocket is always a lot less than it might have been. And then you have to SHIP IT! For goodness sake!
There’s a new site called Pushchair Trader which allows you to list your pushchairs for free but it’s brand new and might take a little bit to catch on. I have a Mountain Buggy Swift listed on Pushchair Trader…feel free to buy it! I’m looking for advice and suggestions regarding selling my pushchairs (and other baby items). They are all looking for a good home to the right person with the right bit of cash. Feel free to advise me or if you’re looking for a special pushchair…you never know…I just might have it in my garage for a very good price!
Are you my mother?
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Wow! That’s a lot of pushchairs! We’re totally different though – I think the only brand new thing that we had for K was her cot, which she has only ever used a handful of times for day time naps. (I think the mattress might be too hard for her). Most of her things have been hand me downs, but we made that decision when I was pregnant: hand me downs or mummy goes back to work. So far I have no regrets.
I see some of my friends having babies now though and they’re all spending absolute fortunes on things that with 9months experiential lead I know they’ll never use. But they’re CERTAIN they’ll be needing that hand shaped pillow to let the baby think they’re holding it, you know. *rolls eyes*
So anyway – I’ll not be buying a pushchair, but it might be worth looking in your local area? For example in Putney there’s nappyvalley.net and here there’s the East-Dulwich forum – maybe get someone to list for you in those areas? (happily do ED for you!)
I cannot believe that people aren’t falling over themselves to buy them – those are so fab!
Now if you had a lightweight double I’d be over there in a dash
Have you tried eBay? Had lots of fun selling on there (which reminds me of the backlog I need to sell on there – oops)
Wow….that’s a lot to sell. Yes you’d think people would be falling over themselves. I’m sure you have but have you tried the local papers? At least then there is no postage involved. I took part in a blog sale, of clothes, yesterday. It was all baby stuff, mainly very expensive baby stuff but I didn’t sell a thing. Oh well…..we will live among mountains of baby clothes. I’m not giving them away.
Good luck with your sale. x
Nova…thanks very much. I haven’t done local papers yet but have just put up an add on Netmums to see if I can shift some of them. A mummy friend is opening a 2nd-hand baby stuff shop in a few weeks and I’ll put some in there as well if I can’t get rid of them soon. eBay would be a last resort but it may have to happen. Thanks for the advice!
As for clothes…good lord! I’ve got mountains as well. Oh well…
Where was your garage full of pushchairs yesterday when the wheel dropped off mine, causing me to have to accept at 3 and a half Jude probably doesn’t need a buggy, so I was plunged into nostalgia over my buggy pushing days being over. I even blogged about it I felt that sad. Incidentally everything we got for our 1st baby was 2nd hand other than the cot and Moses basket mattresses. We simply couldn’t afford to buy new things, these people must be mad not buying your buggies.