Technologies

As Black Friday nears, secondhand gifts poised to ride a holiday shopping wave

It’s not cheaping out to give gifts from online auction, thrift and consignment sites, shoppers say.

Teresa Chin, a friend of mine from grad school, got an early start hunting for Christmas ornaments for her in-laws this year. She’d heard about global supply chain snags and didn’t want to be caught empty-handed for the holiday.

So Chin turned to Poshmark, an online market for secondhand clothes and household goods, where she found figurines of skiing cheetahs — objects full of personal references that would tickle her husband’s parents. Because Poshmark sellers tend to list what they already have on hand, Chin didn’t worry about her cheetahs missing the holiday because of busy ports or blocked canals. The purchases also fit her value of consuming less new stuff.

“It’s on time. It’s cute,” Chin told me. “It feels personal.”

Chin is far from alone in giving gifts euphemistically referred to as “previously owned.” Spurred by concerns about consumer waste and climate change, attitudes about secondhand goods have been shifting for years. The reevaluation has created a booming business for everything from auction sites to online consignment stores.

The popularity of used items has prompted many consumers to consider a practice that was once unthinkable: giving secondhand goods as gifts. Nearly 40% of respondents to a survey conducted on behalf of resale site Mercari said they’re planning to buy at least one secondhand gift this year. Half of those said they’d be comfortable telling the recipient the gift was previously owned. Sales in luxury categories are swift as the holidays approach, according to eBay, which said it’s seeing five pre-owned watches and three pre-owned handbags sell every minute as the holidays approach.

The move toward secondhand gifts is getting a powerful boost this year from the COVID-19 pandemic, which has shuttered factories and closed down ports. That’s made new items susceptible to shipping delays and supply shortages. Secondhand goods aren’t subject to those woes. If the collectible sneakers are on the site, they’re in stock.

Buying used items online has been around since Web 1.0. But options for finding the perfect gift have multiplied in recent years. Early internet standby eBay, where designer clothes, electronics and collectibles have been on offer since the 1990s, now competes with peer-to-peer markets like Poshmark and Mercari. Online consignment shops, including the RealReal, ThredUp and Vestiaire Collective, have also sprung up.

Neil Saunders, a retail analyst at Global Data, whose firm helped conduct the Mercari survey, says people buying online for themselves has helped break down the psychological barrier to shopping for used gifts.

“We’ve seen that stigma come down year after year,” Saunders said.

Used goods can mean less environmental damage

Some shoppers are drawn to online thrifting and consignment as a way to reduce their environmental footprint, ThredUp and the RealReal both say. This extends to gift-giving, as 22% of shoppers in the Mercari survey said they’d turn to the secondhand market during the holidays because of sustainability concerns.

Buying used fashion lets gift-givers find something nice that contributes less to climate change than something new would. The fashion industry has a bad reputation for emitting greenhouse gasses, polluting water and contributing to deforestation, which has pushed more socially conscious people to buy fewer new clothes. More than 40% of respondents said sustainability was a “deciding factor” for shopping at the RealReal, according to survey data from the company.

ThredUp has found that sustainability is especially motivating for younger shoppers, says Christina Berger, a company spokesperson. ThredUp and other online resellers could prompt fashion brands to make fewer, higher-quality products, she says.

“There will always be a place for new items, of course,” Berger said. “But overall we need to reuse more and produce less.”

Used goods can be one of a kind

Many gift-givers, like my friend Teresa, are looking for something unique that matches the recipient’s tastes. Recent changes in the way shoppers view fashion trends mean that many people are interested in finding older handbags or accessories from fashion collections that are hard to find. Having the latest isn’t the only — or even highest — priority for fashionistas.

That shift was already underway with items like sneakers, which grow the most in resale value of all apparel categories, and now means the most thoughtful gift you can give a fashionable friend might end up being a Gucci handbag from a few years ago. Consignment sites might have only one or two listed among all their other items, so receiving that exact bag could be a big deal.

“It’s extra special knowing that the gifter curated something for you from millions of items,” said Rati Levesque, president of the RealReal.

Used goods don’t have to seem cheap

Holiday gift-givers aren’t Scrooges because they shop secondhand. Sure, you can find a nice winter coat or brand name athletic wear at around half the listed retail price on many auction, thrifting and consignment sites, but you can also find Versace handbags and Cartier watches that cost more than a thousand dollars.

Many consignment services are aimed at people who see clothes as an investment. Companies like the RealReal and ThredUp say they want to help consumers buy higher-cost items new, and then resell them to recoup some of the cost.

It’s a potential alternative to fast-fashion buys. Instead of constantly buying cheaply made clothes that wear out easily, shoppers who can afford to pay more up front can access togs that cost more but last longer and retain some of their value. Some sellers might get only part of their money back, and others might get even more than they originally paid because some items go up in value as they become harder to find.

Electronics are another item that shoppers can find at a discount on resale sites, including eBay, and they aren’t necessarily less nice as gifts. Most people want to give electronics in a sealed box, says Jordan Sweetnam, senior vice president and general manager of eBay North America. The company’s eBay Refurbished program provides electronics in generic packaging, and sometimes includes new user manuals. Name brands also sell their own refurbished products on eBay, typically with branded packaging and quality guarantees.

That, he says, provides “that fresh out-of-the box feeling that’s so important when gifting refurbished products.”

Technologies

Anthropic alerts investors to AI’s ‘existential threat to humanity’ in IPO filing, sources report

Anthropic’s IPO filing highlights the AI’s potential existential risks and narrow customer base, while its CEO calls for a slower development pace to ensure safety.

Anthropic plans to warn speculative investors in its IPO prospectus that its AI models pose a “catastrophic or existential risk to humanity,” several reports said on Tuesday.

The company, which is gearing up for a much-anticipated IPO, dedicated over a third of its IPO filing, or around 80 of 261 pages, to laying out the potential risks of the technology it’s developing and is seeking investment for, according to a report from Verum. It only used 48 pages to discuss its actual business.

The five-year-old company, known for its frontier language model Claude, warned that AI can have “self-preserving behaviors,” including being able to “resist shutdown,” “conceal or manipulate information,” and carry out behaviors “resembling blackmail,” per the Verum report.

The company is pursuing a $2 trillion valuation when it goes public and reported in the filing that it made a net loss of $42 billion in 2025. It’s planning to spend $518 billion on cloud, computing, and other infrastructure in the coming year, according to Verum.

Anthropic also warned that its customer base is extremely narrow, with nearly a quarter of its revenue last year coming from just two clients, two people familiar with the filing told the Financial Times.

AI safety guardrails

Anthropic’s co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei has previously written various essays warning on the threats of AI, including saying the technology will cause “unusually painful” disruption to the job market.

In another recent essay, the CEO urged the AI industry to slow the pace of AI model development, with a three-step plan to reduce how quickly models get better without “sacrificing commercial advantage or the United States’ lead in AI.”

Those calls for a slowdown are somewhat of a “head scratcher” for the sector, to which the market has reacted “pretty resoundingly,” Dan Ives, partner and senior managing director at Yorkville Ives told CNBC earlier today.

“You need guardrails from a safety perspective, but the fact for Anthropic and OpenAI to slow down, if they slowed down, China would just accelerate and win, and I think that’s part of this quagmire that you’re seeing is that there’s some regulatory capture going on. There’s definitely a game of poker, but for Anthropic, they got to continue to put foot on the pedal.”

Ives added that while guardrails are essential, regulation could stifle innovation. That continues to be the “biggest concern within the U.S., which is why we’re in an F1 race,” he said.

Technologies

U.S. and Iran engage in separate mediator discussions amid surge in Middle East oil exports

U.S. and Iranian officials held separate indirect talks mediated by Qatar as Middle East crude exports neared wartime highs, while Tehran awaits a U.S. response to its cease‑fire and sanctions‑relief proposal.

On Monday, American and Iranian representatives engaged in distinct indirect negotiations mediated by third parties, aiming to halt seven months of hostilities while Iran awaits Washington’s reply to an updated cease‑fire proposal and Middle Eastern oil shipments reach wartime peaks.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met with Qatari mediators in New York, staying on after the UN General Assembly, and indicated he anticipates a U.S. response by Tuesday. “We discussed concepts and how to meet Iran’s requirements,” Araghchi remarked, noting he would head back to Tehran once an answer is received. “When the Qataris have a reply, they know how to deliver it to us.”

The Iranian plan, initially unveiled during the sidelines of last week’s UN General Assembly, asks the United States to unfreeze Iranian assets, remove oil sanctions and lift the naval blockade of Iranian ports within four to five days, and to commence nuclear negotiations within a week. Tehran links any resumption of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz to the fulfillment of those conditions.

On Sunday, President Donald Trump dismissed the proposal as “unacceptable,” asserting that Iran seeks a rapid agreement due to economic strain. Speaking at the White House on Monday, Trump noted that U.S. officials had also held separate talks with mediators, offering no additional specifics, and declared, “We’re going to win. It’s going to happen fast.”

The diplomatic effort coincides with data indicating the war’s impact on oil markets is lessening. Middle Eastern crude exports have risen this month to near their highest point since the conflict started in February, according to Kpler. The firm noted in a Monday briefing that exports are “just under 80% of pre‑conflict levels.”

The Strait of Hormuz remains far from usual activity. Kpler’s real‑time monitoring recorded a flow of 10,591 kilobarrels per day through the strait on Saturday, compared with a prewar baseline of 17,133 kilobarrels per day.

The ongoing impasse is influencing U.S. fuel markets, where retail diesel prices linger close to a record $6.53 per gallon. The Trump administration is reconsidering an export ban, having recently distanced itself from an earlier iteration of the idea; Kpler estimates such a ban would retain about 1.2 million barrels per day domestically, potentially straining storage capacity.

Technologies

Saudi Red Sea export rebound pushes oil prices down

Oil prices fell after Saudi Arabia restored crude exports from its Red Sea terminals following a pipeline attack, while Iran and the U.S. continue talks over the Strait of Hormuz.

Oil prices fell on Tuesday as Saudi Arabia’s crude exports from its Red Sea ports recovered from an attack on a key pipeline earlier this month. The decline reflects renewed flow from major loading points.

Satellite imagery confirmed a “major operational recovery” at the Yanbu and Muajjiz terminals, according to a Kpler note released on Tuesday. The data shows that 12.5 million barrels were loaded onto nine tankers at Yanbu between Saturday and Monday, restoring activity after a drone strike disrupted the East‑West pipeline earlier in the month.

Riyadh has brought the pipeline’s throughput back to roughly 3.5 million barrels per day, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News on Monday. The line’s maximum capacity is 7 million bpd, indicating that the current flow is about half of its peak.

Meanwhile, U.S. and Iranian officials spoke with mediators on Monday as they attempt anew to negotiate a deal to end the seven‑month conflict. Iran offered last week to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days if the United States accepts the terms of the failed June memorandum of understanding, but President Donald Trump rejected Tehran’s proposal on Saturday as exports through the waterway recover.

Oil flows through Hormuz have averaged 13.2 million barrels per day over the past week, according to Kpler data—about 77 % of the 17 million bpd that moved through the strait before the U.S.–Iran war. The U.S. military continues to protect tankers from Gulf allies and maintains a blockade on Iranian exports.