ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the contours of, and changes in, the marketing and selling of second-hand goods in Western Europe and Atlantic America, between c.1600–2000. It dispels the idea that second-hand goods were circulated on the margins of “the market”, commodities only sought after by the needy and indigent in “economies of makeshifts”. Second-hand goods were, in fact, marketed and sold at myriad venues, from elite auction houses and street sellers’ baskets, to buyers of every social rank, and at all price points. Second-hand retailing could make fortunes as well as supplement more meagre incomes, and it offered up a route to supplying goods which, before widespread industrialisation, were difficult to mass-produce and circulate. By considering the different modes and locations of second-hand selling across four centuries, the continuities in such practices and the continued economic and cultural values of such circulations are highlighted.
