Secondhand Holiday Gifts 2026: Six in Ten Shoppers Plan to Buy Pre-Owned

Secondhand holiday gifts 2026 go mainstream: 62% of US shoppers plan to buy pre-owned, expect to put 37% of their gift budget into resale, and say they would rather receive a vintage find than a mass-produced new gift.

Secondhand holiday gifts 2026 are not a fringe habit any more. In ThredUp’s 2026 Holiday Resale Report, 62% of surveyed US consumers say they plan to purchase secondhand goods during the holiday season (Just Style). The survey, carried out by GlobalData for ThredUp among 2,123 US adults between 4 and 18 September 2026, was nationally representative by age, gender, location and income (Chain Store Age).

Read that number slowly. A majority — not a niche of committed thrifters — now treats a pre-owned present as a normal way to shop for the biggest gift season of the year. Information verified through 10 November 2026.

Secondhand holiday gifts 2026, in the numbers

The budget share is the figure that changes the picture. Shoppers who plan to buy secondhand expect to put an average of 37% of their holiday gift budget toward pre-owned items, and that rises to 45% among millennials (FashionUnited).

Thirty percent say secondhand buying will help them give to more people, up from 23% in 2025 (Just Style). This isn’t one token thrift-store present tucked among the new things. For a large slice of shoppers, resale is now a third or more of the whole plan.

ThredUp’s own marketplace tells the same story from the till side. Its holiday items sold rose 37% between 2023 and 2025, against 22% growth across the full year — the gift season is pulling resale faster than the rest of the calendar (Just Style).

The stigma question has flipped

The sharper finding is about receiving, not buying. Fifty-five percent of respondents say they would rather receive a unique, vintage or hard-to-find pre-owned gift in excellent condition than a new, mass-produced alternative (Chain Store Age). And 84% say they would like a gift as much or more after learning it was secondhand (Just Style).

Uniqueness, in other words, now competes head-on with the discount. Respondents valued it almost as highly as price savings, and millennials ranked uniqueness first (FashionUnited).

ThredUp’s co-founder and chief executive James Reinhart puts the shift in one line: “For years, a second-hand gift was the budget choice. Now it’s the thoughtful one” (Just Style). That’s a seller talking his own book, and worth reading as such. But the receiving numbers — gathered independently by GlobalData — point the same way he does.

Selling from your closet to pay for holidays

Resale now funds the season from both ends. Fifty-three percent of respondents have sold, or expect to sell, items they own to help pay for the holidays, rising to 66% of Generation Z and 69% of millennials (FashionUnited).

On ThredUp’s Direct Listing service, handbags from Tory Burch, Coach and Longchamp are among the higher earners heading into the season, alongside occasionwear and labels such as DÔEN, Veronica Beard and Ulla Johnson (Just Style). The wardrobe you stopped wearing becomes somebody else’s present, and the proceeds become yours.

The pressure underneath is real, though. Respondents expect more than twice as many social occasions in November and December as in a typical two-month stretch, and 74% say they made at least one trade-off last holiday season — most often going without something for themselves, at 38%, or spending less on a gift than they wanted (Chain Store Age). Forty-two percent expect to spend more than last year (FashionUnited).

There’s a useful contrast in a second survey released on 5 November. SweepsPulse found 43% of Black Friday shoppers regret at least one purchase within a week, and only 38% of those who regretted a buy actually returned it (GlobeNewswire). Countdown timers and aggressive marketing were the most-cited push into a regretted purchase, at 36% (GlobeNewswire). Hunting for one specific pre-owned thing is, by its nature, slower shopping than that.

Analysis: the honest caveat is in the method. These are stated plans from a September survey, reported by a company that sells resale, and year-over-year comparisons rest on respondents’ memory of last season (Chain Store Age). Plans shrink. Still, a 62% intention figure, a rising budget share and two years of holiday sales outpacing the platform’s own annual growth are hard to wave away. The used gift has stopped needing an apology attached.

Photo: Orderinchaos, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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