Listings for tablet computers shot up 25% on auction site eBay on Christmas Day, compared with the day before, as Brits moved quickly to offload unwanted presents.
The site had nearly 2,000 items listed under "unwanted Christmas gifts" on Friday morning as people in the UK found themselves with an estimated £2.4bn worth of non-ideal presents.
Surprisingly, many people chose to resell one of this year's most sought after gifts – an iPad Air. The latest Apple gadget outnumbered iPad Minis by four to one in listings put up on eBay on Christmas Day.
Ebay claims 80% of people in the UK are prepared to resell an unwanted gift. Certainly handmade items seemed high up on the list of things to pass on. An impressive 25,000 craft items were listed for sale on Christmas Day. However, rival site MusicMagpie said the gift most listed on its site on Christmas Day was Lady Gaga's album Born This Way, followed by The Inbetweeners Movie.
The most unwanted gifts are DIY tools, according to eBay, but clothing is one of the hardest presents to get right, especially for women. More than 10 times more women's clothes than men's clothes were listed for sale on eBay on Christmas Day. Meanwhile, Topshop dresses, Topman shirts and Next women's jeans were among the top 10 items being sold on MusicMagpie.
Hints about the bestsellers this Christmas, meanwhile, have emerged from Amazon. The online retailer, said that former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson's book My Autobiography was its best selling book alongside children's works Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck, the animated films Despicable Me 2 and Monsters University followed by the superhero movie Man of Steel.
The retailer said more than half of its customers shopped using either a smartphone or a tablet computer. The Centre for Retail Research estimates that up to £370m was spent online on Boxing Day, which could rise to £450m on Friday. Around 13.3 million people are estimated to have turned out for the start of the clearance sales, up 2% year-on-year, according to CRR..
