Baby stuff: Brand new or second-hand?

It’s been a very long time since I posted here & our lives have changed dramatically in that time. Nearly four years ago we had our little boy, Stellan. Recently I’ve been going through a small mountain of baby stuff that has been taking up room in the garage & it prompted me to wonder whether it is better to buy baby things first or second-hand.

Back when I was pregnant, I got a lot of baby items second-hand to save money. Our travel system pram/pushchair/carrycot came second-hand from Gumtree from a lady in Colchester – we replaced the car seat with a new one – the Moses basket (only used for a couple of weeks as it creaked & kept me awake!) was purchased via eBay from a new mum near Saffron Walden .

Even some clothes were second-hand, either from friends or charity shops and the Saffron Walden lady sold me a mountain of expensive baby clothes – some still with the tags on – her friends and work colleagues had given her. Many friends were very generous to us when we were expecting Stellan – one in particular drove up a couple of times from Kent with a trailer and car full of stuff. Another couple lent us their expensive cot until Stellan was old enough to have a ‘big boy bed’.

At the time we saved hundreds of pounds but now I wonder whether it may have been a false economy. The difficulty is that second-hand items are often not worth much when you try to sell them on. Other people I know who bought their pushchairs brand new have been able to recoup much more of the value when selling them on.

The pushchair I loved – a Joie Chrome – cost us £160 second-hand but is now worth no more than £50 on eBay. In fact, in the end, I decided I couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of selling it and other baby items myself after failing to sell our Tommee Tippee machine on eBay – I just don’t have the time to spend on it – so I donated it and our also preloved Jumperoo to our local village charity shop.

The pram went for £20 in just a day – I felt a pang as I drove past and saw it outside for sale – but it will at least hopefully have helped the charity in some small way and whoever snapped it up will have got a bargain that they might really need.

And at the end of the day, it’s just good that these things are being reused instead of disposed of as they might have been in the past.

Did you sell on your baby items? What was your experience? Leave a comment and let me know.