Trade Me said 4300 unwanted Christmas gifts had been listed on the site by 9am today. Photo: 123rf
Thousands of unwanted Christmas gifts from around the country have already been listed on Trade Me.
More than 4300 presents that had missed the mark were available on the online auction website by 9am on Boxing Day.
Some items listed include a single Roses chocolate wrapper, a llama mug and a sterling silver bracelet given to a person allergic to sterling silver.
But Trade Me's Millie Silvester said there were benefits to people auctioning the presents they did not want.
"It's a lot better that these items are on-sold, I mean, you can get some money to get something you really want, otherwise they could end up tucked away in a cupboard, never used for years - or worse yet, in landfill," she said.
"We reckon [on-selling the items is] a much more eco-friendly option."
There were 70,000 Trade Me searches for unwanted gifts on Boxing Day in 2021 and this year, since Christmas Day, Trade Me said it had seen more than 8000 people searching for unwanted gifts.
A recent Trade Me survey of more than 2500 New Zealanders found more than half typically receive at least one unwanted gift at Christmas.
Nearly 70 percent of the survey's respondents said they if they were given a gift that they did not like, they would pretend to like it, while 40 percent said they would feel fine if they found out that an item they had gifted to someone had been on-sold.
Meanwhile, the police are warning people who are selling or buying online items to make sure they do any trading in a safe zone.
They have issued a list of safety tips:
- Meet in a public, well-lit area or consider only trading in daylight hours.
- Trade near, or in front of, a known/working CCTV camera, in busy foot-traffic or perhaps by a police station.
- Don't go to the transaction alone.
- Make sure a friend or family member is aware of the transaction details.
- Don't go into someone else's house, and do not allow them into yours.
- Be extra cautious when buying or selling valuable items such as vehicles and jewellery.
- Only use cash to complete your transactions and never deposit money into a person's account without receiving the item first.
If somebody was not willing to come to a safe trading zone, it was probably not a legitimate transaction, police said.