A Handbag’s Tale

As any woman (or fashionable man) will tell you, it’s a sad day when your favorite purse wears out.  Chances are you and your purse have been through a lot together and when the day comes that a strap rips off, or a vital zipper breaks, or a mysterious odor arises, then a number of difficult decisions have to be made.

I’ve been lucky.  My old messenger bag, bought off the sale rack at TJ Maxx at the Arboretum in Austin, hasn’t had a major malfunction.  It’s just that her pseudo-leather skin is seriously thinning and stretching in places, not unlike my own. It’s only a matter of time before there are ruptures and tears and quite frankly, I can’t put her through that.  We’ve had many an adventure together. Trips to England to see Jamie.  Beach days in Maine, Texas, Florida and Yorkshire.  She was there when I got married and when I buried my dad.  She’s held notebooks and drawings. Cameras and croissants.  She deserves a quiet and happy retirement.  Donating her to Goodwill is out of the question. I’ll keep her full of scarves and sweet-smelling soaps and we’ll continue to grow old together.

But her rapid decline put me up against the herculean task of finding another to take up the cause.  It’s been quite a learning experience.

I’ll admit that I have never really put much thought into buying purses.  Usually I see something on sale and find a way to make it do.  This time, however, I knew I needed to go into this with clear objectives.

1.     Must be leather and sturdy.

2.     Must be able to hold 35mm camera, eye glass case, sketchbook, sub-purses of varying content and if possible, a rotisserie chicken.

3.     Must have a strap long enough to wear the bag cross-body style.

4.     Must be within my less than modest price range.

Those didn’t seem like big demands.  Handbags are everywhere, how hard could this be?  Pretty hard. 

 As we were out and about, I would do quick searches of the purses nearby.  Here on the Gulf Coast it’s a strange mixture of massive, ugly, short-handled bags in the shops.  It’s pretty clear that a girl on the go in Sarasota is looking for fashion accessories shaped like purses, not shoulder companions.  I quickly became disenchanted with retail offerings.  The prices were outrageous and the styles were so dictated by the flavor of the day that everything was looking the same.  Visits to charity shops were little comfort, full of designer knock-offs and the sad remains of Walmart and Target purses.  Where were all the affordable, utilitarian and non-abusive handbags hiding?  And then it occurred to me:  they might be on eBay.

I had never been to eBay and in some ways I wish I’d never gone.  Like Craigslist and Uncle Henry’s, it sucks you in.  The more you look, the more you find. One minute it’s 7 o’clock on a Friday morning and the next thing you know it’s 2pm and you’ve not had breakfast, bathed nor even brushed your teeth.  Everything you can possibly imagine, and few things you don’t want to, can be found on eBay. The only thing I remembered about the website was a story that at some point eBay stopped allowing people to sell dirty underwear.  I know…gross in so many ways.

Right now, at 11:41am on this 29^th of March, if you type ‘Handbags’ into the search bar on eBay, you will get 638,407 results, which is down 100 results from when I did the search just five minutes earlier and is now up to 638,414 in the past couple of seconds.  Things here are constantly on the move. After the initial giddiness subsided, I dove into my bag search with great determination.  The perfect bag was out there and I was going to find it.

That was weeks and a couple hundred thousand bags ago.

It quickly became clear that if I was going to have a life outside of eBay and keep my marriage intact, I needed to be ruthless with my searches.  I used the price, color, material and brand filters. But eBay is clever--use one brand criteria and ten more show up for you to check as well. Is the style a tote or a shoulder bag? What is the desired strap drop? Is the bag NWOT (new without tags) or perhaps in EUC (excellent used condition)? eBay is truly its own universe with its own language but it is quite fabulously human and once I stopped being concerned with finding the perfect bag, the real fun began.

People trying to sell things, especially things they no longer want, are the most upbeat and positive life forms on the planet.  What’s more, they have great faith that you are going to want their stuff  even if they don’t put a photo or a description, or in spite of the fact that they have.  To keep my sanity, I ultimately limited my searches to Coach and Cole Haan bags as I knew the quality of even their older bags would be good, plus there were enough women my age getting rid of out-of-style bags that I was finding things that would actually work for camera bags and travel.  I have to say that the sellers of Coach bags have really won me over, bless their neurotic, fashion-savvy, altruistic minds.  Here’s a sampling of some of the ads.

The coach purse you are bidding on is pre-owned and is in very good condition except torward the bottom of the purse as you can see in the picture it had laid on something wet and made it a different color on the bottom and if you washed it , it might come out  & the one hook on the strap does not work the spring broke so i put tape on it as you can see in the picture other than that its in good condition and there is nothing wrong with the inside of the purse the strap is adjustable or you can remove it. it has a zippered pocket in the front and a pocket inside. i have only had it for 2 months and still needed my bigger bag so iam giving someone else a chance to have a coach bag at a lower price.

Nice authentic coach purse pre owned. 13" wide 11" tall 3" deep with a 6" strap drop. The fact it is swade it has certain stains and blemishes but it does come with a genuine swade brush. Please see all photos because I am selling as is. 

You are bidding on a used in good condition Coach Purse.

 Slightly Used Authentic Coach Black Leather Handbag!!!

 Used only about 7-8 times, I bought it at a authentic Coach store in Columbia Mall, Maryland

 Dimensions - Length 13" x Width 3" x Height 7"

 ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL LEATHER

 For daily use, special occasions, friendly meetings, etc!

 Sadly, I do not have any space in my closet anymore so I must get rid of this beautiful bag I am truly sorry to let it go and wish the winner a happy use with this bag!

 MSRP: $299.99

Coach Pop Seq Wrslt, SV/OPAL, new with tag but price cut off, I will give a free lipgloss I will pick color and brand. Smoke Free Home. Shipping 5.95 Cont USA others ask
















Selling a pre-owned brown Coach hobo style handbag, with inside zip pocket, fabric lining.
Condition is fair, with some normal wear and tear to the outside of the bag, inside lining is well used, and there are some pen markings that are not that noticeable except up close.  The strap is broken as shown in the picture, but can easily be repaired at a leather shop or sending in to Coach for repair.

There are thousands of ads like these and the gusto, or lack thereof, with which they present their product has been the source of hours of entertainment.  Truly, if you have a bout of insomnia, log in to eBay.  It’s better than the tele.

In the end, I ended up with two bags: one for the camera and wallet, the other for days when the kitchen sink needs to come with us. An inter-changeable strap, also found on eBay lets both bags fill their complete destiny in the Pearson universe so I’m happy as Larry.

In fact, it was the quest for the strap that led me to the happiest discovery of this whole handbag adventure.  At PurseBlog.com I came across a discussion thread among Coach handbag owners that had me in tears.  At first, they were tears of mocking laughter.  Who on earth refers to their purses by their model names? Why does someone’s world simply not work if the metal on the strap doesn’t match the metal on bag?  But the more I read, the more I had to smile.  We are passionate beings, we humans, and while a closet full of Coach handbags might not be as important as curing cancer or feeding the hungry, it’s still about being  devoted to something that matters to us.  If we’re capable of having an abiding love for a handbag, then we are, as a race, capable of the most extraordinary things.  In the long run, that's got to be a good thing.  And even when we have peace on earth, we’ll still need a place to keep our keys.

(All photos from Google images.  And yes, I did end up with a Cole Haan bag, a dream come true for a Freeport girl who always felt terribly under-dressed when she followed Holly into the store on Main Street.)