Instagram Is The New Garage Sale

Last month, I spent 45 minutes lingering on New York City’s most fragrant corner (outside Penn Station; we’re talking notes of urine and trash) to pick up a coffee table I’d seen on Facebook Marketplace. The seller asked if I could pick it up on Monday, but I didn’t see it until Tuesday because, well, who uses Facebook Messenger? I apologized and we planned for Wednesday. He gave me his cross-streets but never followed up with his actual address. It was only hours later, after I was already in bed, that he replied: “So sorry I missed this, I don’t usually check Messenger.”

I should’ve known better. I’ve successfully sold plenty of items on Instagram, including a cocktail dress and a curling iron. Each transaction took mere minutes, and I trusted the buyers would actually show up because we’d been exchanging friendly DMs for years. My foray onto Facebook Marketplace was to find an identical replacement for the round glass and gold Target coffee table I’d bought from a work acquaintance on Instagram a few years back. (If you’ve ever shopped for secondhand furniture online, you’ve seen millions of these.)

Once upon a time, these items might have been relegated to garage sales or, in many cities, stoop sales. But those take effort to organize and luck to stumble across, and an interested crowd might be hard to find. Enter Instagram — not just a platform for showing off ‘fit pics and snooping through your ex’s wedding photos, but also a marketplace for clothing, furniture, kitchenware, and even sex toys.

While navigating the Instagram economy is not as cut and dry as shopping from traditional online retailers, it’s often a more sustainable and budget-friendly way to score unique items. It combines peak laziness (face it, you’re always on the app anyway) with the spontaneous thrill of stumbling across a flea market gem. It also lends a personal touch — you’re buying from people whose taste you admire, or you know and trust — that can be more satisfying than ordering from brand-name retailers. Hot pieces sometimes lead to a competitive frenzy, but for many, that’s part of the fun.

Do You Like The Thrill Of The Hunt?

Kim had spent nearly a year searching for the perfect rug when her Holy Grail popped up one night at 11 p.m.: a colorful vintage carpet that could withstand foot traffic from her young kids and elderly cat, in just the right size for her living room. The yoga studio owner prefers to shop secondhand because of pre-loved items’ price and charm but had been striking out on Etsy and Facebook Marketplace.

The Hobbit Door House, an online purveyor of Turkish rugs she’d been following for months, posted the carpet. “I was seeing her posts all the time, and I was actively checking them. I had gotten familiar with this woman’s products and energy via seeing her posts over time, so it was more comfortable for a cold purchase, so to speak,” she says.

“Her rugs sell very quickly, so it was a little high-pressure, and it was not cheap — around $1,100. It was definitely a little stressful because there's no returns, and you get nervous about the colors — are they going to show up the way they [look online]?” she adds.

After a midnight DM chat with the seller and a quick PayPal transaction, the rug was hers, and today, she’s happy with how it looks and is glad she made a sustainable purchase with a story behind it.

You Probably Won’t Be Disappointed

When you buy an item from a longtime follow, there’s an increased sense of clarity and trust. That’s especially true if you’re buying something from an influencer, says design writer and thrifting expert Sarah Lyon. “So many people feel like, ‘Oh, she wore this, there are really nice photos of her wearing these things, I know it’s going to look good,’” she says. “That makes it better than your normal Poshmark or something, where you just see a wrinkled shirt.”

Quality can be tough to suss out online, but this kind of thrifting might lead to less of a hassle than shopping from regular retailers. Case in point: I recently ordered a pair of wooden nightstands from Wayfair. When they arrived, I discovered that the poorly functioning drawers were actually covered in faux fur, a crucial detail not visible in the photos. Had I been picking up these babies from a seller’s apartment instead, I might have been able to see, feel, and test them out before paying.

You Can Get Free Sex Toys (Seriously)

People score items for free, too. In 2019, the anonymous husband-wife team behind @StoopingNYC began blasting photos of stuff left on the street along with their locations.

In a city like New York — where foot traffic is high, space is tight, people are transient, and moving is a particular nightmare — the concept caught on quickly. Today, they have nearly 500,000 followers and receive hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of photos a day. Many make it to Instagram stories, and the best ones are featured on the grid. Pickup speed is key: “If it’s a great item, we’re talking minutes,” the account’s creator says. If you want mid-century modern furniture in beautiful condition, for example, you better sprint.

Velvet couches, vintage dressers, and gently worn bookshelves make frequent appearances, but they’ve also spotlighted a blanket featuring Nicolas Cage’s face, roses that spell out “MARRY ME,” unused COVID tests, a bubblegum pink spray tanning machine, and — in a Y2K fever dream come to life — dozens of Beanie Babies.

We’ve had probably four or five submissions that say, “My ex is trash, now take his.”

They skip mattresses (bed bugs are a real threat) but do occasionally highlight NSFW goods, including a 9-inch dildo (new in the box), an industrial-size bottle of lube, and a porn collection on VHS and DVD. (Whether you actually want to touch any of those is, of course, a very personal choice.)

Got Cheap Trinkets? Cha-Ching

In August, fashion editor Bella Gerard wanted to sell some items before moving in with her boyfriend. She initially tried to list furniture, pottery, art, and vintage glassware on Facebook Marketplace, but kept getting ghosted by would-be buyers. Many of her pieces were flea market finds with single-digit price tags — less than the subway fare needed to pick them up.

“I thought there might be something embarrassing about being like, ‘Hey, I think this is valuable, do you want it?’ I thought people might be like, ‘B*tch, just throw these out.’”

Impostor syndrome nearly got the best of her, but ultimately, she posted the listings on Instagram, too. It worked — she sold 20 items “like hotcakes.” She says, “When things are curated and people don’t have to go seek them out, sometimes the price tag is worth it.”

Because she ran the sale herself, she kept every penny — which wouldn’t have happened if she’d gone through Depop, thredUP, or other third parties. As Lyon, the pro thrifter, points out, “On Instagram, because it’s people who follow you, I think they might be a little more nervous to make a low offer. Where, I feel like sometimes on Facebook, people will really try to haggle.”

Anyone Can Make A Sale

With more than 16,000 followers, Bella has a wider audience than many, which undoubtedly contributed to her success. “If you’re following me, you probably like my aesthetic, so there’s a good chance you would want to buy something I already own,” she says.

But don’t bow out if you have a more modest follower count. As she points out, your followers are probably in a similar stage of life and share your tastes — they’re primed to like your stuff, and some might feel even more comfortable purchasing something from a regular person they know IRL instead of an influencer.

On Both Sides, It Just Plain Feels Good

Treating Instagram like a garage sale has one more benefit: It feels good.

On the seller’s side, the eco-friendly move can be a cathartic way to give your belongings a second life. “People want to feel like their items are helping somebody else and not filling landfills,” @StoopingNYC says. (It’s also an easy cleaning hack for the newly single. “We’ve had probably four or five submissions that say, ‘My ex is trash, now take his.’”)

For buyers, chasing down something you saw online gives the coveted item a story. After all, isn’t thrifting a 2013 iMac from the sidewalk more exciting than scrolling through endless results on eBay?