Mercari: A Secondhand Hidden Gem By: Jessica Lydon

Gen Z are no strangers to secondhand sites. We’re well-acquainted with spending hours on Depop, Poshmark, Thredup, and eBay, scouring for that long-sought-after item and hoping the seller accepts our offer. It’s a song-and-dance that those of us with an interest in vintage fashion and music know particularly well. Still, many of my fellow collectors are unfamiliar with a site that has often yielded me my greatest finds and prices: Mercari. 

The basic facts are that Mercari is a Japanese e-commerce company founded in 2013. Its platform operates similarly to the sites listed above, with millions of individual sellers who are not affiliated with the company listing any items they want to sell. This results in a wide variety of merchandise, particularly vintage or rare items. However, while such information can provide an overview about the company, it leaves potential buyers wondering what the experience of shopping on Mercari will actually be like, especially in comparison to other secondhand sites. 

Many of the sellers on sites such as Depop and Poshmark are young adults who treat their pages as small businesses. In some ways, that can be good: they often respond quickly to messages, send your order with pretty packaging and notes, and offer one-of-a-kind clothes that they personally designed, made, or altered. However, like all businesses, they’re out to make a profit. They’ll accept offers, but not much less than the original listing price, and they’ll often list in-demand items very close to their original retail price, regardless of condition. 

Mercari sellers, on the other hand, are often older adults who view the items they’re selling not as desirable vintage or hot collectors’ items, but as outdated clutter that they want to clean out of their closets and basements. While this does mean slower message responses and less pretty packaging, it also means significantly lower prices. Mercari sellers are not looking for profits; they just want to get their old stuff out of the house. One desirable vintage item on any of the previously mentioned sites could easily set you back fifty dollars, but on Mercari, I was able to find everything from custom jewelry to vintage magazines to rare out-of-print posters for under thirty dollars. More often than not, they were even under ten. It seems too good to be true, but on Mercari, nothing is. 

Mercari’s seller demographic also results in a much wider variety of items for vintage collectors or those with very specific interests. For example, as a passionate 80s rock fan, I’ve been able to find much more band merch on Mercari than on Poshmark or Depop. If you’re a collector with a specific niche or your heart set on one item, Mercari is the place for you. 

Whether you’re a fashionista who’s tired of bankrupting yourself for authentic Y2K clothes, a collector who’s looked everywhere for that one issue of Guitar World with your favorite axeman on the cover, or a college student who needs a whole lot of posters at a reasonable price for your new dorm, it’s beyond worth it to check out Mercari before you shell out the big bucks for one of the bigger names.