Online vintage stores - what to look for when buying vintage clothing on eBay

Every Tuesday I pop into the newsagents, clutching a couple of pound coins in my hot little hand. This is given to the cashier in exchange for a copy of Grazia magazine. In case you've never heard of/read it, Grazia is targeted squarely at the urban, well-paid professional woman: someone who likes to keep up with the latest celebrity gossip and trends, and doesn't think that £500 (about $750) is far too much to pay for a handbag. Yet I'm not urban or well-paid, and I just barely scrape into the "professional" category these days. Oh, and the most I've ever spent on a handbag is £35. So what am I doing reading a mag like Grazia?

Well, the main reason is an abiding interest in fashion. These days I'm more of a spectator than a participant, although I did do a little happy dance when I realised that leggings were making a comeback. (On hot, sticky summer days they're one of the few things I can face wearing on my bottom half.)

My favourite feature in Grazia is the regular "Style Hunter" section, which shows fashion-forward women snapped by the magazine's photographers on the streets of London or some other big city. More often than not, the women are wearing designer stuff, but they're just as likely to be in something from the high street. Or they'll have on something vintage. If you've got more imagination/style than cash, vintage is a great way to ensure that you end up with an outfit you can wear rather than it wearing you.

If you hunt around, you're sure to come across some great vintage bargains, although pieces from the 1940s and 1950s are becoming rare. There are vintage clothing stores in many good-sized towns and of course, you can always comb through the charity shops. However, you might find it harder to spot a vintage charity shop bargain these days, because a lot of charity shops now intercept the vintage gear before it reaches the shop floor, and auction it off on eBay instead.

From the charity shops' point of view, it makes a lot of sense. If you sell on eBay, you can reach a bigger potential market. At any given time, there will be around 8,500 items of vintage clothing and accessories available to UK eBay buyers. So it's a good place for vintage style hunters. 

It's vintage, dahling… except when it's retro

However, you do need to have your wits about you. As an eBay seller of seven years' standing, I've had plenty of opportunity to browse other listings to see what other vintage sellers are doing. While there are many excellent sellers out there, some sellers do employ what I would describe as sharp practice. For example, they'll describe an item as "retro" rather than "vintage", without making it explicit that "retro" means "vintage-style" rather than actually vintage. When they're pulled up on it in their feedback, the seller just replies "Oh, but I did say it was retro and not vintage". IMO this is a tad disingenuous, since many people probably think that the words "vintage" and "retro" are more or less interchangeable.

Another thing is postage charges. eBay appears to be gradually trying to get sellers to offer free postage, in an attempt to stop buyers from being stiffed by excessive postage costs. (The more cynical among us think that eBay is doing it because they'll benefit from increased listing fees, because sellers will have to put up their starting prices in order not to lose money.) My recommendation to buyers is: always check the postage costs. If they're not listed, ASK. And if the seller is vague or doesn't answer, then don't bid. It's always worth checking out what sort of combined postage a seller offers on two or more items paid for and sent together. But unless the postage of a single item is high to begin with, don't expect sellers to send two or more items for the price of one. There's a lot more involved than just actual postage costs - there are listing fees, final value fees, PayPal fees, packaging costs, and the sheer time involved in wrapping parcels and taking them down to the post office.

Obviously, you will also need to consider the way the item has been described. Has the seller taken several pictures from different angles? Have they given what seem like adequate measurements, or are you happy just to take a punt and sell the item on/give it away if it doesn't fit you? Again, it's always worth asking the seller for more info if you want clarification. I personally think it's helpful if as well as giving raw measurements, the seller says what current size they think the item is, e.g. "the shirt's actual bust measurement is 38 inches and it would probably be best for a current UK size 12".

Colour is another consideration. I've bought items online from well-established retailers and found that their real-life colour was nothing like it was in the catalogue/website. So this sort of thing is certainly going to happen when you buy stuff on eBay. It helps if the seller takes pics using just enough flash to illuminate the item, but not so much that it's overexposed. (After several years of using a digital camera, I finally stumbled on a simple but effective technique: put your camera on the lowest flash setting, then use a small piece of white card to partially cover the flash bulb.) Sometimes though - despite Photoshopping to adjust the colour balance and contrast - the colour STILL won't come out right. So it's a good sign when the seller says something along the lines of "this has come out blue in the pics but it's actually more purply in real life".

The seller's description of an item's condition is another thing that will help you decide whether or not to buy. Some sellers will simply say "Excellent", "Very Good", "Good" etc. (I myself am occasionally guilty of this.) The trouble is that such ratings are subjective. One person's "very good" can be another person's "I'm going to chuck this mouldy thing in the bin straight away". I would be more inclined to trust a seller if they've given a specific description of what if any flaws an item has, such as "there's a small hole on the back, which is about 1mm wide", or even "no specific problems - just general wear". And if they've actually provided photos of the flaw(s), all the better. eBay has recently waived the fees for pictures on some of its categories, allowing sellers to upload up to twelve pictures for nothing. This can only be a good thing, as it gives sellers an incentive to photograph their items thoroughly.

Look at a seller's DSRs (detailed seller ratings) in their feedback. These cover four categories: condition, speed of delivery, communication and postage costs. Someone who's got nearly a whole five stars' worth of DSR is obviously going to be more reliable than someone who just barely scrapes a four star rating. (If they don't even get four stars, and they've got more than 100 feedbacks, then my advice is "don't buy from this person".) IMO, the DSR is helpful to buyers but it's not the whole story and if someone is just starting out as a seller and doesn't yet have much feedback, one bad DSR can skew their rating and put off other buyers, which doesn't seem fair to me. I would strongly recommend looking at the actual feedback comments themselves to see if there's a pattern (e.g. items not reaching the buyer, poor condition, poor communication etc.). eBay could make things a lot more helpful for buyers, by allowing them to see all negative feedbacks on one page regardless of how old they are. But I don't see that happening any time soon.

Lastly, don't just rely on eBay if you want to buy vintage online. There are specialist online retailers (hit the search engines for ones based in your country), although these do tend to be more pricey. And there are also other auction sites. Another site that might not yet be on your radar is Etsy. Its main emphasis is on hand-made clothing, jewellery and other crafts, but there is also a strong vintage section. Prices are in US dollars so if you're not from the US, you will need to convert the currency to your own to gauge whether you're getting a good deal.  (Edit: Etsy listings now convert prices into the currency of the country you're viewing in - no calculator required!)  And in case you were wondering: yes, I've got an Etsy shop as well - you can find it on mgi1289.etsy.com (to chime in with my eBay user name, which is also mgi1289). Happy hunting!

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