A second-hand discount is a price advantage advertised on a used, refurbished or resale item. What separates it from an ordinary sale price is the figure the saving is measured against. A retailer cutting the price of a new jacket compares its own earlier price for the same jacket. A reseller listing one previously owned jacket has no earlier price for that unit, because the unit is sold once. The saving is therefore expressed against something else: the price of an equivalent new item, a manufacturer's recommended price, or an estimate of what the item originally cost. That substitution determines which feed attributes work, which annotations appear and which consumer protection rules apply.

Resale runs on advertising infrastructure built for new goods, where feeds, sale badges and comparison surfaces assume a stable item sold repeatedly at a knowable price. Second-hand supply breaks that assumption unit by unit.

How the reference price is chosen

Three bases are used in practice, and they carry different evidentiary weight. The seller's own prior price works only where a trader holds repeatable stock, such as a refurbisher offering one handset model in one cosmetic grade month after month, and it alone behaves like a conventional sale price. The new-equivalent price is by far the most common: a marketplace such as Back Market or Amazon Renewed prices against what the device costs new, and the saving is the difference. The third is a seller-declared original retail price, collected by consumer-to-consumer platforms from whoever lists the item, and nothing verifies the input.

Cosmetic grading adds a second axis, since the spread between grades on one model is marketed as a saving in its own right, stacking two discounts on a listing from two different reference points.

Where the discount lives in the product feed

Google Merchant Center encodes condition in one attribute accepting three values, submitted in English regardless of feed language or target country: new, refurbished and used. Refurbished means a product professionally restored to working order so that it appears new and carrying a warranty. Used covers second-hand items and anything modified from the manufacturer's original state, including opened or missing packaging and autographs. The attribute is optional for new products and required for every used and refurbished one.

Reach is constrained by the value. Google's documentation states that used and refurbished products are not displayed on YouTube organic and Discover surfaces regardless of campaign type, though they remain eligible as ads on YouTube, the Display Network and Gmail. Declaring the condition honestly costs visibility.

The saving sits in separate attributes. Price and sale price hold the two figures, and sale price effective date bounds the window. For the strikethrough annotation to render, Google requires the sale price to be lower than the base price, the discount to fall above 5% and below 90%, and the base price to have been valid for 30 days within the previous 200, which need not be consecutive. Both prices must appear on the landing page, and a shorter qualifying window applies in a named group of markets including France, Germany, Japan, Canada and Brazil.

None of that fits a unique item. A vintage dress listed once has no 30-day base price history, cannot earn a sale annotation, and must carry its saving in the title, description or landing page. Identifiers fail the same way. Google's identifier exists attribute covers products without a Global Trade Item Number, naming one-of-a-kind goods, vintage products, antiques and books published before 1970, and setting it to false removes the item from the identifier-matched comparison graph behind most price benchmarking.

Condition is a segmentation key as well, since Google requires separate product IDs where price, availability or condition differ between online and in-store versions of an item, enforced from March 2026.

Diverging condition taxonomies

Three values are not how marketplaces describe used goods. eBay's Merchant Integration Platform lists 16 condition enumerations, among them LIKE_NEW, NEW_WITH_DEFECTS, CERTIFIED_REFURBISHED, EXCELLENT_REFURBISHED, PRE_OWNED_EXCELLENT and FOR_PARTS_OR_NOT_WORKING. CERTIFIED_REFURBISHED replaced the deprecated MANUFACTURER_REFURBISHED and is restricted to pre-qualified sellers, while SELLER_REFURBISHED has been withdrawn from numerous categories in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia. Meta's catalogue specification matches Google with three values, so a merchant syndicating one inventory across all three collapses a 16-point scale into a 3-point one, and the grading that justifies the price gap disappears from the feed.

From FTC guides to Article 6a

Regulation of reference prices predates e-commerce. The Federal Trade Commission's Guides Against Deceptive Pricing, published at 32 FR 15534 on November 8, 1967 and codified at 16 CFR Part 233, cover former price comparisons, competitor comparisons and manufacturer suggested retail prices, treating a former price as legitimate only where the article was offered to the public on a regular basis for a reasonably substantial period. In decisions running back to the 1940s the Commission had also held that advertising used or reconditioned merchandise without disclosing that fact is deceptive under Section 5.

Europe moved from principle to arithmetic. Directive 98/6/EC on price indication was amended by Directive (EU) 2019/2161, the Omnibus Directive, which added Article 6a with effect from May 28, 2022. Any announcement of a price reduction must state the prior price, defined as the lowest price the trader applied during at least the 30 days before the reduction. The Commission's guidance, adopted on December 17, 2021, is explicit that comparisons with a recommended retail price are not price reductions and fall outside Article 6a, remaining subject to the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, while warning that a comparison an average consumer reads as a price reduction can breach both instruments at once. That passage describes the second-hand discount exactly. On September 26, 2024, in Case C-330/23, Verbraucherzentrale Baden-Wuerttemberg v Aldi Sued, the Court of Justice held that a reduction announced as a percentage must be calculated from the prior price rather than merely displayed alongside it.

France legislated on vocabulary instead. Decree 2022-190, published on February 17, 2022 with effect from January 1, 2022, reserves reconditionne for second-hand goods function-tested against safety requirements, repaired where necessary and wiped of previous user data, and bans etat neuf and comme neuf on any product described as reconditioned.

Why the category matters

Resale has moved from the margin of retail into the media plan. European online fashion growth slowed to 3% as resale gained ground, according to NIQ research, and the platforms carrying that supply now sell advertising against it. Vinted joined the European Media Marketplace as a founding partner on July 7, 2026 alongside leboncoin and Kleinanzeigen. IAB Europe's definitions count classified advertisement services as commerce media networks in a European retail media market it sized at 11.1 billion euros for 2024, up 22.2% year on year.

Scale figures vary by source. A DHL survey cited in coverage of Vinted's locker expansion put 8% of surveyed shoppers buying through Vinted against 59% for Amazon, while ThredUp's 2026 resale report, prepared by GlobalData for a company trading in the market, projects a global second-hand market of 393 billion dollars by 2030.

Limitations and disputes

The reference price is the weak point. Under EU law a comparison against a recommended retail price is not a price reduction, so the 30-day prior price rule does not constrain it and the only test is whether an average consumer is misled. The commonest form of second-hand discount is governed by a standard rather than a formula, with enforcement following complaints rather than data.

The trader question compounds it. Article 6a binds the seller, not the intermediary, and the Commission's guidance states that it does not apply to marketplaces that merely provide the means for others to sell. On a consumer-to-consumer platform the individual listing an item is not a trader at all, so neither rule reaches the saving displayed beside the listing.

Grading is self-declared. eBay asks sellers to supply a condition description alongside most used and refurbished values, a disclosure obligation rather than a verification step. Platform policy adds its own penalty, since an accurate condition value narrows distribution on Google's organic surfaces, creating a quiet incentive to mislabel.

Environmental framing carries fresh exposure. Directive (EU) 2024/825 on empowering consumers for the green transition applies from September 27, 2026, restricting generic environmental claims and sustainability labels not based on a certification scheme, which reaches the language routinely attached to resale promotions.

Disambiguation

A sale price annotation compares against the seller's own base price, validated by Google against 30 days of history. A second-hand discount usually compares against a price the seller never charged, so it cannot use that mechanism.

A price drop badge is generated by Google from observed price history rather than submitted by the merchant, and needs a listing old enough to have one.

Refurbished is not a synonym for used. Google requires professional restoration and a warranty; France requires testing, repair and data erasure before the word may be used. Used carries no such conditions.

Trade-in credit reduces the price of a new purchase in exchange for an old device. It is a payment offset at checkout, not a reference price comparison.

Recent developments

Discovery is shifting to surfaces that compress choice. Google deployed agentic checkout on November 13, 2025, extending price tracking so that a purchase executes automatically when a tracked item falls within a stated budget. A Productrise study published in August 2026 found AI Mode surfacing roughly 95% fewer product listings than standard search on identical queries tracked over three weeks in July 2026. Fewer slots and machine-mediated comparison favour items with complete structured data, which second-hand inventory frequently lacks, and the attributes Google ties to AI surfaces keep multiplying. For sellers whose items carry no identifier and no price history, the structured route to a visible discount narrows while exposure on the unstructured route grows.

Timeline

  • November 8, 1967: The FTC publishes the Guides Against Deceptive Pricing at 32 FR 15534, later codified at 16 CFR Part 233
  • February 16, 1998: Directive 98/6/EC on the indication of prices is adopted in the European Union
  • December 12, 2002: Google launches the product search service that becomes Google Shopping
  • November 27, 2019: Directive (EU) 2019/2161 adds Article 6a to the Price Indication Directive
  • December 17, 2021: The European Commission adopts guidance on the interpretation of Article 6a
  • January 1, 2022: French rules on the use of reconditionne take effect, published as Decree 2022-190 on February 17, 2022
  • May 28, 2022: Article 6a becomes applicable across the European Union
  • March 26, 2024: Directive (EU) 2024/825 on empowering consumers for the green transition enters into force
  • September 26, 2024: The Court of Justice rules in Case C-330/23 that announced reductions must be calculated from the prior price
  • November 13, 2025: Google deploys agentic checkout tied to price tracking
  • January 6, 2026: Google announces separate product IDs where online and in-store condition, price or availability differ
  • March 2026: Enforcement of the product ID split begins
  • March 27, 2026: Deadline for member states to transpose Directive (EU) 2024/825
  • July 7, 2026: Vinted joins the European Media Marketplace as a founding partner
  • September 27, 2026: Directive (EU) 2024/825 becomes applicable

Summary

Who. Refurbishers, resale marketplaces, classified platforms and individual sellers advertise the discounts. Google, Meta and eBay define the condition vocabulary that carries them. The European Commission, national consumer authorities and the Federal Trade Commission set the limits on the reference price.

What. A second-hand discount is a saving advertised on a used or refurbished item, usually measured against the price of an equivalent new product rather than against a price the seller previously charged. In a product feed it depends on the condition attribute, on price and sale price fields designed for repeatable stock, and on identifiers that unique items often do not have.

When. The reference price rules date from the FTC guides of 1967 and Directive 98/6/EC of 1998, tightened by Article 6a from May 28, 2022 and by the Court of Justice on September 26, 2024. Environmental claims attached to resale come under Directive (EU) 2024/825 from September 27, 2026.

Where. In Merchant Center and marketplace feeds, in Shopping and AI surfaces where the badge does or does not render, on product pages where the comparison is displayed, and in national consumer law where the wording of the claim is judged.

Why. Resale is growing faster than the retail categories it draws from, and its sellers need a way to express value inside advertising systems built for new goods sold repeatedly at known prices. The gap between those two models is where the discount is constructed, and where it is most often contested.