How to buy secondhand clothes without getting burned

A wool coat that cost $400 new sells for $45 used. Here is how to buy it without collecting a closet of things that never fit.

September 7, 2026 · 4 min read

A man seen from the shoulders down in a grey sweatshirt, pulling a charcoal wool coat out of a rack of secondhand coats and flannels in a thrift store.

Secondhand is where the value is right now. A wool overcoat that sold for $400 new goes for $45 on eBay because some guy stopped wearing it in 2016. Same wool, same buttons, probably five winters left in it.

The catch is that buying used is a skill. No size chart, no returns most of the time, and photos shot on an unmade bed. Here is how to do it without building a closet of things that never fit.

The price gap is biggest on the expensive stuff

Cheap clothes depreciate to nothing because they were nothing. A $20 fast fashion hoodie is worth $3 used and it earns that. But a garment that cost real money loses 70 to 85 percent of its price the moment someone wears it twice, and the wool does not know the difference.

That is the whole trade. Barbour waxed jackets that retail near $400 sit at $90 to $130. Harris tweed sport coats, $50. Levi's 501s from the 90s, $40 to $60 if you are patient, and that denim is heavier than what Levi's sells today. Welted leather boots, $70, plus $110 later for a resole, which still beats a new pair.

September is the season for it. Everyone cleans out a closet the week the weather turns, and the coats from the fall jacket ranking all hit resale within a season or two of release.

Measure something you own, then shop by numbers

This is the one habit that separates people who buy used well from people with a pile of regrets.

Take a shirt you already like. Lay it flat, grab a tape, and write down four numbers: pit to pit across the chest, shoulder seam to shoulder seam, sleeve from shoulder seam to cuff, and length from the base of the collar down. Do the same for a jacket and for pants (waist flat, rise, inseam, leg opening). Keep them in your phone.

A navy wool overcoat laid flat on a wooden floor with a measuring tape stretched across the chest from armpit to armpit, next to a folded pair of faded jeans.

Now the letter on the tag stops mattering, which is good, because sizing has drifted hard. A medium from 1998 runs about 20 inches pit to pit. A medium today is closer to 22, and 23 in anything sold as boxy. Shop by letter and you will be wrong half the time. Shop by 21.5 inches and you will be right almost always.

Any seller worth buying from lists measurements. If they do not, message and ask. Someone who comes back in an hour with real numbers is someone who will also pack the thing properly. Someone who says "fits like a medium" is guessing.

For denim, run the fit checks from the jeans guide against the listed waist and inseam before you bid.

What holds up, and what is already dead

Buy used: wool anything, rigid denim, leather boots and belts, flannel, chore coats, tweed, oxford cloth shirts, waxed cotton, cashmere if the underarms are clean.

Everything else deserves suspicion. Sneakers with a compressed midsole are done, because foam does not spring back no matter how clean the upper looks. Stretch denim and anything over about 2 percent elastane breaks down in five years whether it was worn or hung. White tees yellow at the collar and never come back. A knit that is already pilling at the underarm has short fibers and will keep pilling for the rest of its life.

If the repair costs more than the item, pass. You are shopping, not adopting.

Zoom every photo before you commit. Underarms, crotch seam, elbows, back of the collar. Those four spots fail first, and a seller shooting from six feet away is often shooting from six feet away on purpose.

Where to look, in order of effort

eBay is the best tool by a distance, and saved searches are why. Set one for the exact thing you want, something like "Barbour Bedale 40" or "Levi's 501 34x32 made in USA", turn on the alert, and let it run for a month. Sort by newly listed, not by relevance. Offer 15 to 20 percent under asking on anything that has sat more than a week, since sellers take it more often than you would guess.

Grailed is faster and pricier. Those sellers know what things are worth, so you pay closer to fair value and waste less time hunting. Depop is priced for the styling in the photo more than the garment, and it works best for graphic tees and cheap 90s outerwear. Local thrift stores have the best prices and the worst odds, so shop them by touch: walk the rack with your hand out, feel for wool and heavy cotton, and ignore sizes until something feels right between your fingers.

Price the tailor in before you click buy

A used jacket almost never fits right through the sleeve, and used pants almost never fit right at the hem. Fine, as long as you budget for it. Hemming pants runs $15 to $25, shortening jacket sleeves $40 to $60, taking in a shirt body about $25. A $50 tweed jacket plus $60 of sleeve work is a $110 jacket that fits, which beats a $200 one that does not. What a tailor can and cannot fix has the full rundown, but the part that matters here is shoulders: those are not fixable, so the shoulder measurement is the one you never compromise on.

Since most listings have no returns, it also helps to see the thing on your body before money moves. Drop a listing photo into Style.it and look at yourself in it. That settles the "is this actually my color" question faster than leaving the tab open for three days.

Set one saved search tonight, for one specific item in your measurements, and then forget about it. The good stuff finds you.