A business worth 21 billion a year in total, of which almost half, 9,3 billion (with a leap of 72% from 2016 to 2017) that comes from online. According to Doxa numbers, this is the value of the second-hand market in Italy, which is now on the rise platforms known to the general public such as Subito.it or Kijiji, where you can find literally everything: from gardening to sailboats, from mountain bikes to musical instruments, and above all to engines, which are the 90 piece of a market that has grown year after year from 18 billion in 2014.
Engines alone are worth 15 billion out of the total of 21: from cars to scooters, even tractors. Indeed, among the most searched words on Subito.it in 2017 there are indeed Vespa, tractor, BMW, dinghy, Smart, Camper, Mercedes, and then also kitchen, apartment and sofa. In fact, the "home and person" category is the second most popular in the second-hand market (or rather big market): it is worth 3,6 billion, ahead of electronics with 1,3 billion.
On Subito.it, cars are sold every 20 seconds, a pace that not even smartphones and bicycles (definitely more accessible objects) are able to maintain: either one or the other is sold once a minute, while the sofas are even better, bought once every 40 seconds. Cars also have a significant impact on the average amount collected by those who put the item up for sale: just over 1.000 euros, which becomes 430 without considering the purchase and sale of four-wheeled vehicles.
The figure varies slightly between online and offline sales: the average collection is to be precise 1.030 euros if you sell online, and 1.013 euros if you sell offline. But what does such a high level of the "second hand" market mean and its constant growth both in value of transactions and of users? One thing for sure is that this is not a negative factor: it is not a “grey” economy, parallel to the official one. On the contrary, Doxa's numbers testify that this market is all the more developed the higher the disposable income is.
