Part 1: Inside My eBay Watchlist

How I search and what I save—including vintage tennis things, modernist statement necklaces, CHICCC Italian folding chairs (for tiny spaces:), and the 1960s designer I just can't quit.

Some real talk: This newsletter was supposed to go out yesterday, but my daughter came home from school earlier this week wildly hurling fruit leather all night, so much so that our tiny apartment smelled like a rotten strawberry factory. Neither of us slept much on Tuesday or Wednesday night…her in a fruit leather vomit fever dream, deliriously asking me things upon waking every few hours like, “Mommy! Where are my purple unicorn pants?!?”

Naturally, this would turn out to be the PERFECT week for me to prep for my colonoscopy tomorrow 🤡. So, as I (belatedly) put the final touches on this slightly sprawling edition of A Tiny Apt.—dedicated to one of my MOST favorite topics on planet Earth—I am consequently ravenously opining about deluxe nachos with a frosty margarita. Alas, life is strange…and full of delicious things we cannot eat until our colonoscopy is completed (by about 10 a.m. tomorrow:).

The truth is, I can’t really talk about eBay without talking about the early days of my former company Refinery29, when in a deliciously pre-scale/pre-viral/pre-SEO world, WE (i.e: anyone who came of age in the dawn of digital) had the freedom to pursue stories and themes and column ideas just because we wanted to. Just because we thought they were interesting and strange/culty and offered something refreshingly unique to our audience that no one else did. It really was a golden age of sorts that probably warrants its own newsletter, BUT one of these early series I loved the most, which I wrote myself every week, was The eBay Blog. That was it. A blog within the site circa 2008 (give or take) about eBay…or more so, everything I thought was cool that week on eBay. Peculiar objets, outsider art, a rare abstract mailer from an exhibition that happened in 1967. You name it, I probably searched for it…and found it.

So it is, that throughout my adult life, eBay has accompanied me on every major shift. Moving into my own apartment, getting married, discovering my personal style through collecting vintage, having a child. Every time I needed something important, something I want to last in my life, I go to eBay first. Not only because it’s more sustainable, but because along with this THING I want/need to acquire be it a pair of vintage denim or a plexiglass spice rack, I also get tons of brain food for what I like and what I want to learn more about. And occasionally, I get to connect with other people there that feel the same way, too.

Me in a New York Times style story in 2010 called “Fashion Goes, Keds Stay.” The photo was taken by Mark Iantosca, and I’m wearing all vintage probably found on eBay, including the vintage Claude Montana navy topcoat.

I think that’s a BIG reason why I love eBay. Why SO MANY of us do. Because we have history.

And, despite the steroid-fueled disruption/expansion/transformation many tech companies undergo as growth and success inevitably take over, eBay remains kind of what it always was—the best 24/7 yard sale on the planet. In fact, next fall eBay will be 30 years old (such a cool millennial:). And yet, as one of the biggest online marketplaces in the world, eBay can also very often feel like an endless labyrinth of STUFF to navigate and dig through, especially if you’re not terribly savvy at how to search. Or don’t even know what you’re searching for.

But friends, that is also the beauty of eBay. The accidental rabbit hole. The seller in New Hampshire who happens to have your daughter’s size Vans in the yellow suede she loves, AND ALSO a vintage James Galanos for Amelia Gray topcoat in the most heavenly shade of dusty pink. Despite my own history/affinity for technology and expansion, nothing comforts me more than crawling into my eBay app for some bliss-giving soul searching. Because that’s what it is—a place where we can find anything…ANYTHING at all, at any hour of the day or night, and buy it from a real person (who might just have a crazy story about it). And maybe also connect with other people who think a vintage Polaroid of a family in front of a White Castle in 1986 is the coolest thing ever.

Here are a few other reasons I LOVE eBay, how I use it, and what I’ve been searching for lately. Part 2 will dispatch to Paid subscribers next week and include an insider’s look at my Saved list): So, if you’re not yet a paid subscriber, why not get on that…❤️