The only parts of Facebook that I still use are the marketplace and Buy Nothing groups. To my knowledge, there’s no better place to get rid of stuff that you own in a responsible way that provides use for someone else. I’ve probably sold or given away over 100 items in the last 7 years.

My most memorable interaction happened when I lived in Athens, Georgia. I had listed 10 or so items at the same time during a purge / cleaning. A man had messaged me about two different items: a portable speaker and some other item. When he realized I was the same seller, he said, “what else ya got” and proceeded to buy at least 5 of the items I was selling including a fuzzy blanket.

Not only that, he got delayed in arriving at my place for over 12 hours, continuing to message me exactly what was happening the whole time (something about his adult son causing trouble and him having to go fix the situation). When he came, he arrived with a 6 pack of Stella beer as a thank you gift for my patience. He was content to hang out and chat in the parking lot even though it was past 11pm. He didn’t ask my age.

It’s incredibly humbling how thankful people are for the things I no longer want. Someone takes almost anything that I list.

When I sold my original Wii, years after the Switch came out, the father that I sold it to was so thankful that he would have something nice to give his kid for Christmas. Reactions like that are surprisingly common.

I’ll always remember one time when I was selling a mechanical keyboard for $20. We had arranged a time for pickup near my apartment. Unfortunately I lost track of time and didn’t check my phone and 2 hours had passed after the scheduled time. I messaged the person and they said they were still there! It turned out to be someone with at least some social anxiety if not minor special needs. I will always regret accepting the money for that keyboard — I did so in a daze because I was so stunned that they would hang around for 2 hours for a keyboard, not knowing if I would ever reply, let alone show up.

Usually my listings that sell well will have 3-5 inquiries about them and probably 50+ clicks on the listing. Less popular items that sell have 1-2 people message about them and a dozen or two clicks.

Recently when I listed several items, one particular item unexpectedly got significantly more attention than any other item I’ve listed:

The story behind this item is that my Grandma had a version of this in her house. Some of the grandchildren wanted it after her passing. So my mom cross stitched copies for all of the grandkids. It doesn’t really fit in our apartment so I listed it for $10 one late afternoon.

To my surprise, by the following morning I had 42 people message me about it, including saying “it’s so funny”, “I’d love this”, and “I need this in my life”.

I replied to the first couple of dozen saying, “Hey X. There’s a lot of interest in this. How much are you willing to pay?” Most people that responded said $20-25. However one person said they’d pay $40!!

So I marked the item as “Pending” for this user 17 hours after listing it (including a whole night) expecting that to be all. But a few hours later someone offered $45! It ended up selling at this price — for more than a working 42” Fire TV that I had listed at the same time. In the end it had over 1,100 views.

I also investigated trying to mass produce cross stitches like this. It doesn’t seem like the type of thing that’s easily done and the margins are small so I didn’t pursue the idea very far.

None of this could have happened without something like Facebook Marketplace. Shout out to the part of Facebook still helping people and bringing them together.