The short version: eBay’s third-quarter revenue rose 14% to $3.2bn, and its own survey found 47% of shoppers now buy secondhand at least monthly, up from 35% last year. But strip out the resale apps it bought, Depop and Tise, and its active buyers grew 1%. Resale is growing; the platforms are buying their way to it.
eBay Inc. reported results for the three months to 30 September on 28 October. Revenue reached $3.2bn, up 14% as reported and 13% at constant currency, and gross merchandise volume — the value of everything sold on the platform — rose 15% to $23.2bn, according to the company’s results release. Chief executive Jamie Iannone said the quarter reflected “continued momentum across our business priorities”.
The fashion headline sat inside the release rather than in the numbers. eBay’s annual recommerce report, published in October, found that 47% of the consumers it surveyed buy secondhand at least once a month, against 35% in 2025. And on 29 October, a day after the results, The RealReal named Alexis Hoopes as its chief merchandising officer. Until now she was vice president and general manager of global fashion at eBay, a business FashionUnited described as worth $10bn.
The numbers that matter for fashion
The growth figure that deserves the closest reading is the one about people, not money. eBay reported 147 million active buyers, up 10%. Excluding Depop and Tise, the figure was 136 million, up 1%. eBay completed its purchase of Depop, the UK peer-to-peer fashion app, from Etsy on 30 July for $1.4bn in cash. Almost all of the buyer growth in the quarter, in other words, came from apps eBay acquired rather than from eBay itself.
Three other details point to where the company is putting its effort in fashion. Its Authenticity Guarantee for luxury fashion now lets buyers in 23 EU countries buy checked items from sellers in Germany, France and Italy. Its “Endless Runway” events during New York and London fashion weeks sold archival and pre-loved pieces live. And eBay said its live-shopping volume is growing at triple digits year on year, without giving a size.
The outlook cools. eBay guided fourth-quarter revenue to $3.19bn–$3.24bn, which is 7% to 9% growth at constant currency — roughly half the third-quarter pace — and full-year revenue to $12.62bn–$12.67bn.
Why now: price pressure is pushing people to resale
The shift eBay describes is showing up in independent surveys too, and the driver is money. OfferUp’s eighth annual recommerce report, produced with GlobalData and reported by Just Style on 27 October, forecasts the US secondhand market at $246.7bn in 2026, rising to $307.7bn by 2030. In its survey of 1,500 US adults, 44% said they check resale options before buying anything new over $100, and 51% said tariff-related price rises had led them to consider secondhand instead.
Two details from that report cut against the easy story. Roughly three-quarters of US secondhand spending now falls outside clothing, in furniture, electronics and home goods. And 54% said AI-generated or heavily edited images reduced their confidence in a listing. Resale is not a fashion story alone, and trust in what you see on screen is falling just as volume rises.
The same pattern is visible beyond the US. We reported last week that China’s secondhand luxury market is growing while new luxury sales shrink, and Fashionphile’s figures showed the Louis Vuitton Speedy’s resale value rising 16.2%.
The structural argument: resale is becoming a platform business
It is worth being honest about what these numbers describe. Resale used to be a market of individuals: a seller, a buyer, a listing and some trust. It is turning into an industry with acquisitions, merchandising chiefs and growth targets — the same machinery that runs new fashion.
Look at the week’s moves together. eBay spent $1.4bn on Depop and gets most of its buyer growth from it. It is building authentication across borders so luxury goods can move from French, German and Italian sellers to buyers anywhere in the EU. And The RealReal, the US consignment business, has hired the person who ran eBay’s fashion division to sharpen its own luxury assortment and product discovery, according to its chief executive, Rati Sahi Levesque.
None of that is bad for buyers on its own. Authentication reduces fakes. Wider markets mean more supply and fairer prices. But professionalised resale behaves like professionalised retail: it curates toward what sells fastest, prices toward what the data says you will pay, and promotes the brands with the deepest secondary demand. The bargain that made secondhand attractive — the overlooked piece, the mispriced listing — narrows as the platforms get better at their jobs.
That pushes judgment back onto the buyer. A platform can confirm that a bag is genuine. It cannot tell you whether a coat was well made in the first place, whether the leather has been stored badly, or whether you are paying a premium for a logo that will be worth less in three years. We made this point in August: authentication proves an item is genuine, and tells you nothing about whether it is any good.
What it means if you buy or sell designer resale
Resale is now the first place many people look, and it deserves the same discipline as buying new. Four habits help.
One. Use authentication, then inspect anyway. eBay’s guarantee now covers luxury fashion bought across much of the EU, which is real protection against fakes. It isn’t a quality check. Ask for close-ups of corners, handles, linings and seams, and use a checklist such as our step-by-step guide to checking a designer bag before buying secondhand.
Two. Ask for unedited photographs. Over half of the shoppers OfferUp surveyed said edited or AI-generated images made them trust a listing less. They are right to. A seller who will not send a plain phone picture in daylight is telling you something.
Three. Price across platforms, and against new. As eBay, Depop, The RealReal and Vestiaire Collective compete for the same buyers, prices for the same model can differ widely between them. The reader who checks three platforms and the brand’s current retail price before buying will rarely overpay.
Four. Buy for construction, not resale value. The pieces that hold value — a well-made coat, a structured bag from a house that still makes its own leather goods, a vintage piece from a period of better manufacturing — are the ones worth owning anyway. Treat resale value as a bonus, not a reason.
For sellers, the arithmetic is shifting the other way. Wider authenticated markets mean a French or Italian seller can now reach buyers across the EU on eBay, which should support prices for sought-after pieces. The cost is that platforms set the terms, and fees and promotion rules can change faster than a seller’s inventory.
What happens next
Two dates are worth marking. eBay’s fourth quarter, which includes the holiday season, will be reported early next year, and its guidance already assumes slower growth. And The RealReal’s next results will be the first chance to see whether a merchandising chief from eBay changes what the consignment business sells and how it prices it. If Depop keeps supplying most of eBay’s new buyers, expect more resale apps to be bought rather than built.
The honest reading
The resale boom is real, and it is now big enough for the largest platforms to buy and engineer. That makes secondhand easier, safer and more organised — and less of a treasure hunt. The four channels Faz recommends have not changed: vintage and estate pieces, independent designers and craft workshops, accessible luxury, and selective mainstream luxury, with the mid-tier mass market as the one to skip. Resale serves the first and the last of those well, provided you bring your own judgment. The platforms will handle the authentication. The question of quality is still yours to answer.
The next move is yours.
Sources: eBay third-quarter 2026 results release · FashionUnited on The RealReal appointment · FashionUnited on eBay results · Just Style on the OfferUp recommerce report
