We have a lot of differing opinions about Vinted activity in my household. My son thinks [sic] “old people have a massively inflated idea of how much things are worth”, so he would never flog anything on my account, lest he get tainted with oldness. It was hard to know where to start on this argument, between “maybe we just have nicer stuff”; “the worth of everything is determined by the price people will pay for it, in a citizen economy”; and “I am not old”.
My daughter, conversely, is happy to funnel her wares through me, which is how I arrived at peak Vinted, its very spirit in a single item: I posted a bag of random tat for £2. It sold within five minutes.
This wasn’t a lucky dip. I was scrupulously transparent about what was in it: a single earring; some hair clips; a ring in the shape of a snake that had gone a funny colour; necklaces with that telltale unfixable knot of the truly cheap jewellery item; a different single earring. The first was a tiny cocktail, the second was a slice of cake, so I guess, if you squinted, you could bill them as a themed pair, “elements of a hen night”.
I have never wanted so much to engage in dialogue with a buyer: what quixotic ideas had led them to want all this? What was their hair like? Were serendipitous forces at play, wherein they had the matching earrings or a love of fixing the unfixable? What on earth were they seeing in this rubbish that made them think it treasure even to the value of two pounds? You’re not really meant to interrogate people, though, so I just had to sit there and muse about them.
In the event, I mused for so long that I didn’t send it in time and the sale was cancelled, as was that of the three tiny shampoos, brand new in the box (what were the chances?) and a Google Home device whose resale value is astronomically low. So it’s back to square one; is it possible to sell a bag of random tat twice?
• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
