How often does something new appear on this page?

Every working day we read the press of six countries. If nothing genuinely says something about the trade, nothing is added that day. That is a valid result, not a missed day.

Why is this not a blog?

A blog shows “last post: March” the moment it falls silent, and the site looks dead. This page refreshes in place: the six most recent finds at the top, everything that stood here before in the archive below.

Can I read the article myself?

Yes. Every item names the outlet with a link to the article at that newspaper or trade title itself, plus the date on which we checked it. A summary is not a source.

Which countries do you follow?

Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Denmark. The country shown comes from the outlet's own address, not from the language we searched in.

In the press

Netherlands 15 September 2026

Closed for a month, purely for not keeping the second-hand purchase register

On Monday 24 August the mayor of Veenendaal, in the Netherlands, ordered premises on the Achterkerkstraat closed. They are rented by a dealer in second-hand goods. The reason: he is not meeting the registration obligation, and repeated joint inspections found him in breach again and again. The closure runs for a month. The municipality only made it public on 15 September, three weeks after the fact. Mayor Kats adds that registration is meant to prevent handling of stolen goods and “protects honest dealers against unfair competition”. What is not said matters just as much: no theft was proven, and no judge was involved beforehand — a mayor decides this alone. Failing to keep the register was enough on its own. Why this matters to a dealer: the purchase register is not paperwork you catch up on at the weekend. In the Netherlands, entry in the Digitaal Opkopersregister is compulsory for dealers and buyers, police and enforcement officers check it, and letting it slide costs more than a fine. Here the door stayed shut for a month.

Read it at Nieuws.nl Veenendaal — checked on 15 September 2026

Belgium 13 September 2026

An Asterix cover fetches €1.2 million in Liège, seven times the estimate

On Sunday 13 September, auction house BD Enchères in Liège sold the original colour cover of “Astérix chez les Bretons”: gouache on board, 34 by 47 centimetres, carrying a handwritten dedication from Goscinny and Uderzo to their publisher Georges Dargaud. The pre-sale estimate was €150,000 to €200,000. The hammer fell at €1.2 million; with fees the buyer paid €1.474 million. Belga calls it a world record for a work by Uderzo, just above the €1.4 million paid for “Le Tour de Gaule” in Paris in autumn 2017; “Le Bouclier arverne” had gone for €1,197,000. Why this matters to a dealer: the estimate was out by a factor of seven. An estimate is an auction house's starting point, not a value, so on a rare piece in stock it cannot be relied on in either direction. And the room was in Liège, not Paris: for top-end comic art, Belgium is a home market in its own right.

Read it at RTBF — checked on 14 September 2026

France 11 September 2026

Oxfam sets three second-hand models side by side, and the figures diverge sharply

Oxfam published a report on 10 September setting three second-hand models side by side. For every 5 kg of clothing, a solidarity shop comes out at roughly 0.6 kg of CO₂, a for-profit second-hand shop at 2.9 kg and an online platform at 3.1 kg — buying on a platform can therefore weigh up to five times more than buying in a charity shop. Prices diverge just as far: €3.40 on average per garment in a solidarity structure against €16.70 in a for-profit shop. A researcher quoted in the report calls Vinted “fast fashion for second-hand clothing”: such platforms do not collect, do not sort, do not repair, and carry only part of the logistics. Why it matters to a dealer: the report is titled “tous les modèles ne se valent pas” — not every second-hand model is the same. That distinction now sits in the press with numbers behind it, and you are on the side that buys, sorts, repairs and sells. Read it straight, though: the gap between a for-profit shop (2.9) and a platform (3.1) is small. The outlier is the solidarity model, not the shop. And this is about clothing, not furniture or antiques.

Emissions per 5 kg of clothing

Solidarity shop: 0.6 kg CO₂
For-profit second-hand shop: 2.9 kg CO₂
Online platform: 3.1 kg CO₂

Figures from the Oxfam report of 10 September 2026.

Average price per garment

Solidarity shop: €3.40
For-profit second-hand shop: €16.70

Same report. It gives no average price for the online platform.

Read it at franceinfo — checked on 11 September 2026

France 10 September 2026

Amazon files never-used goods under the “second-hand” label

During its “Jours Seconde Main”, which ran until 10 September, Amazon sold hundreds of thousands of items under the second-hand label: returns, goods damaged in the warehouse, and boxes that had merely been opened. They are sorted into four condition grades, from “like new” to “acceptable”. Amazon’s own line is that only unboxed or used products are offered this way. The figures in the piece — 60 million second-hand and refurbished products in Europe, an average 20% saving against new, more than $4 billion invested in handling returns — all come from Amazon itself and cannot be checked anywhere else. Why it matters to a dealer: the word second-hand is being stretched to mean “the box has been opened”, and your piece ends up in the same category as something that has never been in anyone’s home. One caveat: for the Belgian margin scheme that reasoning does not hold. There the question is not whether a thing has been used, but whether a private person bore the VAT for good. A platform’s category and the taxman’s category are two different things.

Read it at CMCM - Le média de la seconde main — checked on 10 September 2026

United Kingdom 8 September 2026

Vinted is putting US and Australian items in the feed, without saying so

UK buyers have started seeing listings from the US and Australia, often without noticing until they open the listing. Campaigners say this undercuts Vinted's green argument: a parcel from the other side of the world passes through more hands and picks up more packaging. For anyone selling piece by piece, what matters is this: your piece now sits next to that parcel, and the buyer does not see the difference straight away. Vinted itself admits that 94% of its emissions come from delivery - that figure and the other percentages in the article come from Vinted and cannot be checked anywhere else.

Where Vinted's emissions come from

Delivery: 94%
Everything else: 6%

Vinted's own figure, not checkable anywhere else.

Read it at LBC — checked on 9 September 2026

France 8 September 2026

A French second-hand seller has stopped photographing: every model is AI

Paradigme has raised €2 million from Hartwood and One Green and says not one model on its site is human any more: every product photo carries an AI-generated model. It now sells that tooling on to brands that do no second-hand at all. For anyone selling piece by piece this is not technology news but a price question: showing a one-off piece the way a new collection looks costs them almost nothing now, and that is what your photo gets measured against. The revenue figures quoted come from the company itself and cannot be checked anywhere else.

Read it at CMCM - Le média de la seconde main — checked on 9 September 2026

Found in the press

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