Shoppers dig deeper

By 9am on Boxing Day, Kiwis had listed nearly 3000 Christmas ‘‘pressies’’ for sale on Trade Me – while there were 40,000 searches for unwanted gifts onsite.

Some sellers don’t appear to be getting rid of a Christmas clanger – drones, guitars, smartphones and scooters are set to fetch a fair price.

However, at the other end of the ledger, a single glass cup or a Forgetting Sarah Marshall DVD are probably best re-gifted as a bargain for another.

But don’t feel too bad about it – a recent Trade Me survey found that 60 per cent of Kiwis felt OK finding out that a gift they had given was on-sold.

The survey of 1000 New Zealanders found that half of all Kiwis who opened a present on Christmas Day didn’t like it.

It probably won’t ruin anyone’s Christmas, but 83 per cent said they did their best to avoid any awkward silence and pretended to like the gift.

Trade Me spokeswoman Millie Silvester said Boxing Day was big for the website, with hundreds of thousands of Kiwis selling gifts not quite hitting the mark.

‘‘Last year we had over 130,000 unwanted gifts searches as Kiwis hunted out a bargain. We expect to see just as many shoppers this year, too.’’

Silvester said the gifts most likely to conjure up fake appreciation were cleaning products, clothes that didn’t fit, and weird craft items, according to the survey.

‘‘Amazingly, several survey respondents told us they got Spray and Wipe for Christmas, while one respondent said a 25kg bag of salt was the worst they’d received.

‘‘If you’re thinking about selling an unwanted Christmas gift on Trade Me, our hot tips are to give the item a good back story, and avoid items personalised or easily identifiable.’’

On Christmas Eve, Trade Me revealed a compilation of some of the best rejected Christmas presents people have tried to resell.

The list included a lump of coal and a red Toyota convertible that no-one wanted.