Selling family treasures to pay bills (AP/CNN)

NEW YORK (AP) -- The for-sale listings on the online hub Craigslist come with plaintive notices, like the one from the teenager in Georgia who said her mother lost her job and pleaded, "Please buy anything you can to help out."

Or the seller in Milwaukee who wrote in one post of needing to pay bills -- and put a diamond engagement ring up for bids to do it.

Struggling with mounting debt and rising prices, faced with the toughest economic times since the early 1990s, Americans are selling prized possessions online and at flea markets at alarming rates.

To meet higher gas, food and prescription drug bills, they are selling off grandmother's dishes and their own belongings. Some of the household purging has been extremely painful -- families forced to part with heirlooms. iReport.com: Tell us how's the economy treating you

"This is not about downsizing. It's about needing gas money," said Nancy Baughman, founder of eBizAuctions, an online auction service she runs out of her garage in Raleigh, North Carolina. One former affluent customer is now unemployed and had to unload Hermes leather jackets and Versace jeans and silk shirts.
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more: http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/05/01/cashing.out.attic.ap/index.html

seeing a huge increase in people pawning their possessions. It was very sad, knowing that all their personal items were going on to the market like that.

maybe I am just more attuned right now, but it seems like suicides are rising in all age groups.

That's heartbreaking.

But Hermes leather jackets, Versace jeans, and silk shirts?

Why wasn't that person putting a 'jacket' or two in the fucking bank? You know, looking after their own economic security? If you've got money for that crap, you have money for a nest egg.

First, pay YOURSELF. Then go out and have a little fun. How many jackets can you wear? How many silk shirts? How many jeans? That crap goes out of style, soon enough. This 'easy consumerism' might be on the way out:

Christine Hadley, a 53-year-old registered nurse from Reading, Pennsylvania, says she used to be "a clotheshorse," splurging on pricey Dooney & Bourke handbags. But her live-in boyfriend left last year, and she has had trouble finding a job.

Piles of unpaid bills forced her to sell more than 80 items, including the handbags, which went for more than $1,000 on a site called AuctionPal.com. Now, except for some artwork and threadbare furniture, her house is looking sparse.

"I need the money for essentials -- to pay my bills and to eat," Hadley said.

At AuctionPal.com, which helps novices sell things online, for-sale listings rose 66 percent from February to March, much faster than the 25 percent to 30 percent average monthly pace since the company was formed in September, CEO Maureen Ellenberger said. She said she was surprised to see that most of her clients desperately needed to sell items to raise cash.