eBay reveals biggest selling items of the year

Friday, January 26, 2018 - 09:14 by Graham Miller

2017 was a big year for safe shopping online and auction site, eBay, has been attempting to reposition itself as a repository of unique, unusual items in order to make up ground lost to major rival, Amazon.

In its latest report, the retailer revealed which products were most sought-after by customers, with a few surprising entries making their way onto the list, according to the Sun.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most dominant brand of the year was Star Wars, with over 450,000 products licensed from this stellar franchise being sold on eBay.

Smartphones were also big hitters, with the iPhone X proving to be in demand among customers looking to avoid paying the £1,000 asking price set by manufacturer, Apple. Around 29,000 of these flagship handsets found new owners via eBay following the September launch, eclipsed only by the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus.

Retro fashion trends were reflected in buying habits, with 57,000 people picking up bum bags via safe shopping online in order to adjust their style to hark back to the glory days of the 1990s. This is no doubt a sign of how millennial consumers are spending their cash to relive their childhoods.

Analysts were even able to discover the most on-trend colour of 2017, with yellow garments seeing the biggest spike in sales, rising by seven per cent. This is largely seen as a result of celebrities wearing clothing of this colour and sharing snapshots of their lives via platforms like Instagram.

Meanwhile, one of the most expensive individual items sold via eBay last year was a Ford GT Base, a supercar which was originally built over a decade ago and has since become a classic. With a final price paid of almost £180,000, it proves that this site is not just for smaller items.