Seven Days at the Bin Store

> But instead Amazon takes the easy money of just auctioning stuff off.

Employing 1.5M people to operate hundreds and thousands of warehouses, trucks, and planes is not easy money.

If it is, you are welcome to throw your hat in the ring.

First it was returns auction sites, I am lucky enough to be in a local regional distribution hub, so for a few years there were amazing finds; $45 FDM 3d-printer that just needed to be levelled properly, a $65 resin 3d-printer (12k) - eventually a year later a curing station for $20, a DJI active phone gimbal worth several hundred dollars for $70.

Over time though, as more and more people found out, the prices started creeping up - there is typically a "buyers fee" percentage, plus of course our overall country-wide "goods & services tax", plus a "picking fee" of about $1.50 per item. So - basically, my personal cut-off was about 25% of retail price for maximum bid, because all of the other fees would add about another 27% of retail price.

Then, the bins stores started opening about a year ago, and the auction quality dropped off dramatically. My experience browsing through bins stores 3-4 times was that is was mostly complete trash, the cheapest garbage that wouldn't even be good for resale or garage/yard sales...

Even though, I pretty much now have my "maker-space" home office kitted-out fully, I do keep monitoring the auctions for specific keywords - but, I can definitely see that both auctions and bins stores are having less and less merchandise, the overall economy must be slowing (potentially geo-political tariffs and uncertainty, layoffs, etc.) - people must be reducing overall amount of purchases and therefore returns...

Several of the local bin stores have closed-up shop in the last 6 months as well...

I have a mother-in-law who has 30-year old electronic gadgets she has no idea what they are for... Image-search turns up no results... (A few are in their original packaging - those are identifiable - but typically useless)

Her box of random cables and "wall-wart" power supplies is huge - puts my old bin to shame... (well, I have since organized my "collection", labelled and sorted everything into many smaller storage bins - sighs... as the story goes, "oh - I no longer need this ancient connector/cable, so I will get rid of it", only to inevitably need it 2-months later, so now I keep them all, but label them...)

When I return something, I feel I'm contributing to the tragedy of the commons - I know I'm still paying for this return, it's just baked into the price. I wish I could get 8% off or something if I promised I wouldn't return it just because I didn't want it.

I'm happy for people that they're able to make some money off of this, but god almighty it makes me sad how much garbage there is in the world. Between amazon, walmart, target, aliexpress, and whatever that new chinese one everyone talks about, there's just so much trash. I was somewhat insulated from it living in Taiwan where it feels like people don't go in for the online shopping as much, until my parents moved here too and brought the habit with them from the States. They figured out the online shops here when I never did after 4 years. Every day new boxes of crap are showing up at their house... I just don't understand how this much plastic could possibly exist on this earth!

This year I'm trying a thing where I only buy secondhand things, if I buy anything at all. Obviously excluding, like, underwear or batteries or bandaids or whatever.

It's been so fun. My e-reader broke on a backpacking trip when I fell backwards against a boulder, so I hopped on facebook marketplace and got a used-once new kobo for like 80% retail, and had a fun conversation with the guy who sold it to me, and he invited me to a mandarin-language reading group, which is something I've been looking for for years as a way to practice in a fun way. I picked up some used books from a different guy who also befriended me and invited me to a philosophy discussion group, another thing I'd been looking for for ages. I happened to spot a modded gameboy color the other day, and bought it when I shouldn't have (I don't particularly need that and I'm trying to just not buy stuff cause it's kinda cool), so that was naughty, BUT I'm now plugged into the local retro console modding scene, another passion of mine. The upsides are so cool.

On a recent trip to Japan, I found a cross street with something like 15 resale shops within the same 400 square meters. Shelves lined with phones, easily half of which are no more than 2 years old, all in of course perfect condition (Japanese secondhand market is phenomenal), many with boxes. I even saw pixel folds, the new model. I can't imagine ever buying a new phone for the rest of my life now that I've seen that. I got a pair of great IEMs that sold at retail for 400$, for 90$, perfect condition in box with all the accessories.

I think we could all stop buying new things tomorrow and feed even the most degenerate shopping addictions for at least 5 years with used goods before we ran out of stuff.