Craigslist 101: Buyers Guide

One of the first places I tend to hit when opening my CL page is the free section. This and other headings we will cover can be found in the For Sale section. Why you ask? Well, for one it is FREE! Being a crafter I have found many of my fabric and crafting supply items here for giveaway. You will find some "junk", but occasionally there will be a diamond in there!

This section is pretty popular, so if you see something you like, hit it fast! Keep your email browser open in case something jumps off the page at you. How do you do this? If you use Internet Explorer and have a Microsoft Outlook email then you can simply hit the email link at the top of the listing under the title and your email compose window will open. For the other 90% of us, you will want to highlight the address via click and drag, right click and select "copy". Go to your emails compose window, right click in the address field and select paste. Easy peasy!

From there you can simply ask the seller or giver if they still have it available, if so when you can pick it up, leave your phone number if you are comfortable with that, and wait for a response.

The free section can be a different animal from the rest of the site given the high traffic nature. Some of the givers don't want 100 emails about the free cat scratching post they have listed, so will simply give an address, leave it on the front porch or end of the driveway and whoever makes it there first will win! If this is the case, be smart and not choose to risk an h ours drive time during rush hour to go get said cat scratching post, as chances are it will be gone before you get there. You can score some fabulous stuff, but thinking ahead is certainly a good plan.

This is also a very popular section for scrappers. With the economy turning a bit down in the last 3 years metal salvage has become a vital past time for some with the resources to do it on a large scale. DAILY there are items being given away in the free section like appliances, hot water heaters, car parts, fencing, lawn mowers, televisions, computer components, etc. So if you know someone making ends meet through metal salvage, make sure they know to look here several times a day.

On any given day you will find pages and pages and PAGES of newly listed clothing items. In the clothing section are also accessories. LOTS of accessories! From wedding dresses, formals, coats, shoes, men's, women's, plus sizes, biker leathers, sports team gear, and yes....high dollar handbags both genuine and not so much.

So many women who covet the designer logo's on their bags and must have the newest line up each season attempt to recoup some of the cost of their investment by reselling the "last years model" on sites such as Craigslist. If this designer is your vice but you aren't so hung up that you don't mind carrying an older design, you MUST check out these listings frequently!

Weddings on a budget can also use CL as a valued resource. New and worn once designer dresses are forever on CL. Need 40 candle holders to put on the dining tables and mirror squares to reflect the well thought out lighting? Most likely someone else did as well and are tired of storing them 2 years later. Oh, yeah. It's in there!

Moving from place to place is a fact of life for some. Moving REALLY big can cause a whole another set of issues! Ponder if you will the cost of a moving van loaded down with 9 rooms of furniture from Boston to Fresno. Ouch! This reality in mind, you will find many a desperate mover on CL needing to sell off their entire furniture collection before the big day. This can be a big deal for you if they happen to have an super huge antique armoire that you know would be fabulous in your bedroom and they only have a few weeks to be gone with it! Good old fashioned flee market haggling can easily be inserted here.

Of course, other life situations can cause a change of scenery in the housewares department. Marriage, divorce, growing child, moving out on their own child, new furniture purchase, etc. You pick, it's all the same to you. Not that you won't have to wade through the ads upon ads for the basement couch that "finally has to go!" which can also be perfect if your basement is currently couchless. But if you are interested in a certain 70" Ethan Allen sofa that you will stop at nothing to find, search it and see if lady luck is rolling with you. You do this by opening the furniture section, then at the top of the page there will be a field you can type in search keywords to narrow your selections. This can be done in any of the CL sections. Keep in mind however that these ads are posted by Mo and Jo Public....not a furniture company advertiser. You may have to be creative and think of how someone random would have listed the item.

When you look into the automobile, furniture, tickets, and motorcycles you will see at the top of the page the words "by owner" and "by dealer" highlighted. If you would rather deal with an everyday CL-er or maybe feel better handling things with a professional seller, you can search only one or the other. Or, leave it to the default "both" setting and see what everyone has available.

Where this option is NOT highlighted in the Craigslist for sale section but is noticed quite prominently is the cell phones category. Talk about overrun with shops and resellers! However, it can often pay off to forge ahead and move through these listings as I can personally attest to! Let's just say that my luck with phones in the past year has been a bit....soggy....and CL has saved my booty more than once!

And if you can't find what you are looking for? The resellers can come in handy looking around for you and checking with their connections. The possibility of them even having it on hand and just not being listed is very good. It is always nice having along term local connection.

As I had stated in the first edition, safety is a huge factor when you are dealing with the public on such a large scale. If Craigslist is like a virtual yard sale, then your yard is now as big as the zip code map in your Yellow Pages! You can still be safe and have great success if you use a little common sense. If you lack that as well, here are a few things to remember:

- If you ask a seller to meet you in a public place and they insist that you meet them at your house, this might not be the sale for you. It doesn't necessarily mean that this person is a creaper as some people don't want to be bothered. But you have to be comfortable first!
- Take a friend or relative with you or meet during the day especially if you have to go to an unknown neighborhood.
- If you answer an ad that sends you to a link for one reason or another, say a mental "No thank you" and delete the email. Trust me. There is no exception to this rule!
- If a seller requests that you send them a money order to them and they will ship you the item, say a mental "Grow up and get a real job" then delete the email. There is also no exception to this rule!
- Last but not least (trust me, many more safety rules to come! Stay tuned!) if you feel ify, and just aren't getting a good vibe, the seller isn't flexible or wants you to meet them at a strange place or time, trust YOU and stay home. It isn't rude to say that you are no longer interested or that you need to "reschedule". You can always find another pair of vintage Hanes tube socks, but you are hard to replace. Word.