When I asked my wife, Cece, to drive me to Trader Joe’s, I wasn’t looking for groceries.
That morning, I’d read a Wall Street Journal story about how Trader Joe’s canvas tote bags had become an “international status symbol,” with some resellers listing them on eBay for up to $50,000.
The Journal mentioned Melbourne, where I live in Australia, as one of the cities hunting for the bags. I had never seen one, but I was in San Antonio with my in-laws for a little bit longer, and a Trader Joe’s was just a short drive away.
I wasn’t expecting to make $50,000, but by the time we found large canvas totes with dark-green straps for $3.99 each, making a thousand bucks off of a few bags didn’t seem completely unrealistic.
“Lucky,” the Trader Joe’s cashier said. “These are the last three.”
Once we returned to Australia, we listed our totes on eBay and Depop for about $50 each. Nothing happened for a day, so we dropped to $40. That’s when the messages started.
The first message asked if the bag was a fake
Every message from a potential buyer opened the same way: Is it real? The resale market is full of counterfeits, and nobody wants to find they’ve got a fake after they’ve paid.
Luckily, I was able to authenticate my listings by sending photos of the original tag still attached to each bag’s handle. It helped close two deals.
This may seem wild for a simple canvas bag, but my Aussie buyers knew exactly what they were paying for — a travel badge, a sign of exclusivity.
People have been photographed carrying these bags in London, Seoul, Tokyo, and even at Paris Fashion Week. There are no Trader Joe’s stores outside the US, where shoppers line up for new drops (especially of the limited-edition mini totes), and each design seems to sell out almost as soon as it lands.
All the scarcity, exclusivity, and virality produced listings in the four- and five-figure range. It did not, however, produce a thousand-dollar sale.
Anyone interested in my listings wanted to negotiate the price. After a week, my first bag sold for $29 and the second for $32. The buyers paid the postage, and eBay took its 13%. A small profit, but not the windfall I had been planning.
The third bag never even made it onto eBay. Cece started carrying it instead. One afternoon, a woman stopped her in the supermarket. “Where did you get that?” Then, before Cece could answer, “Is that Trader Joe’s?”
I agreed not to sell that one. If anyone had ever actually paid the four figures those listings were asking, the agreement would have lasted about a minute.
I had sold two bags, lost the third to my wife, and now needed more stock.
Selling the bags was easy, but finding more has felt impossible
There seem to be two ways to get these bags from a Trader Joe’s: Line up outside a store on the morning a new design drops, or walk in by chance when a delivery lands. I keep trying the second.
In May, I was back in the US for a work trip and went to stores in five states. I didn’t find canvas totes in any of them. San Antonio had plastic-y reusable Trader Joe’s bags, so I FaceTimed Cece from the aisle and held one up to the camera.
“Nobody is going to buy that,” she said. Fair. The truly popular items are the simple canvas bags embroidered with Trader Joe’s iconic logo, especially the mini ones, which come in all sorts of limited-edition colors and designs.
On the way out, I asked a staff member when the canvas ones were coming back. They could arrive any day, he told me.
In June, I was in Seattle for the World Cup when the new striped mini canvas totes dropped, and my feed filled with photos of the lines outside stores.
This time, I had a strategy. Checking one store at a time had failed, so I would cover multiple stores across three states at once and try to hit a delivery as it landed. I took Seattle, my cousin covered Salt Lake City, and my mother-in-law hit San Antonio.
Three states. Several stores. No bags.
Seven months in, the whole thing has made me about $45. I’m going to keep trying, though.
Around Christmastime, we’ll be back in Texas for a month. Cece has the family calendar, and I have a list of every Trader Joe’s within driving distance of her mother’s house … and a few that aren’t. I plan to work through all of them.
Cece has agreed to my plan on one condition: If I find a mini tote, the first one is hers.
A Trader Joe’s spokesperson previously told Business Insider that the company does not condone the reselling of its products.
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