Shopping online for baby products has become confusing and, in some cases, even potentially unsafe. In a recent Consumer Reports evaluation of popular online marketplaces like Temu, Target, Amazon, and Walmart, we found banned and restricted products offered by third-party sellers on the platforms, spotlighting a safety concern that affects millions of consumers.
For part two of this investigation, we analyzed a different part of the online shopping ecosystem: the digital marketplaces where consumers primarily buy and sell directly to one another. We wanted to learn how well these platforms help consumers avoid products that shouldn’t be sold at all, and whether they give sellers enough information to avoid accidentally listing recalled or banned products.
- The Hidden Dangers of Buying Baby Gear Secondhand Online
- How We Evaluated Secondhand Marketplaces
- Banned Baby Products Were Easy to Find on Secondhand Marketplaces
- Finding Rules for Sellers Wasn’t Always Easy
- Sellers Didn’t Always Get the Help They Needed
- Reporting a Problem Wasn’t Always Simple
- Should You Resell Baby Gear That Was Safe When You Bought It?
- What the Platforms Are Doing About It
- What Parents Should Know Before Buying — or Selling — Used Baby Gear
The Hidden Dangers of Buying Baby Gear Secondhand Online
Baby gear can be expensive–really expensive–and when your baby is going to outgrow a bouncer, high chair, stroller, or bassinet in what feels like the blink of an eye, buying some things secondhand can seem like a smart way to save money.
Selling that gear once your child has outgrown it can make just as much sense. Why let a perfectly good high chair take up space in the garage when another family could use it?
Consumer-to-consumer online marketplaces make product exchanges easier than ever. With a few taps, you can find a used crib across town, a high chair from a family whose child just graduated to a booster seat, or a stroller that looks practically brand-new.
But when it comes to baby gear, looking new isn’t the same as being safe.
A product can appear to be in perfect condition and still be too old to meet current safety standards, missing a critical part, subject to a recall, or prohibited from being sold. And unlike shopping at a traditional retailer, where product information and safety warnings are generally presented as part of the purchase experience, a secondhand marketplace may give you little more than a few photos, a seller’s description, and a price.
“Safety information isn’t something you can see in a photo,” says Michelle Barry, president of Safe Infant Sleep, a nonprofit organization that helps teach parents and caregivers about safe sleep guidelines for infants. A used car seat can look pristine and still have a problem that isn’t visible. Car seats have expiration dates, can be damaged in a crash, and may have worn straps, weakened foam, missing labels, or other issues that affect their safety, including recalls.
“We counsel families to never use a hand-me-down or secondhand car seat unless you can be 100 percent certain of its history,” says Benjamin Hoffman, MD, a pediatrician and child-safety expert and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).
That’s a high bar–and deliberately so.
How We Evaluated Secondhand Marketplaces
Between May and June 2026, CR evaluated eBay, Facebook Marketplace, Mercari, and Craigslist, using their mobile apps for iOS and Android to mimic the experience a typical consumer would have when buying or selling a product. We focused on four categories of infant and children’s products with significant safety considerations: drop-side cribs, infant inclined sleep products, infant in-bed sleepers, and padded crib bumper pads. The evaluation also looked at how the platforms handled information about restricted or concerning products, including water beads marketed as children’s toys and weighted infant sleep wearables.
The evaluation studied five factors of the consumer experience:
- Whether banned or restricted products could be found available for sale on the platform
- Whether consumers could find information about products that were banned or restricted
- How easy (or not) it was to report a potentially unsafe listing
- What information platforms provided to people trying to sell baby gear
- Whether the platforms had safeguards in place during the listing process to identify potentially unsafe products
See the full results of our evaluation and our recommendations for platforms (PDF).
Once the evaluation was complete, CR shared its findings with the platforms and gave them an opportunity to respond and make changes. eBay, Facebook Marketplace, and Mercari engaged with CR about the findings; Craigslist did not respond.
The goal was to understand whether the platforms had systems in place to prevent unsafe products from entering the marketplace at all–and to get them out when they did. Here’s what CR’s analysis found.
Banned Baby Products Were Easy to Find on Secondhand Marketplaces
The first problem was also one of the most concerning: CR found banned or recalled children’s products listed for sale on all four platforms it evaluated. Facebook Marketplace had listings for all four of the banned and restricted baby-gear products CR searched for: crib bumpers, drop-side cribs, inclined sleepers, and in-bed sleepers. eBay had crib bumpers, drop-side cribs, and in-bed sleepers; Mercari had crib bumpers and in-bed sleepers; and Craigslist had in-bed sleepers.
The number of in-bed sleepers on Facebook Marketplace was particularly striking. CR found the highest number of in-bed sleepers on that platform–in fact, CR’s evaluators stopped counting after finding 50 in-bed sleepers in an analysis of just 65 listings.
Some of these products have been off the market for years, which makes their appearance on secondhand marketplaces particularly troubling. “Products are banned or recalled because they have been connected to a serious safety risk,” says Oriene Shin, manager of safety advocacy at Consumer Reports.
The fact that these products can continue circulating is precisely why CR believes marketplaces need stronger systems to identify and remove them. Some of the products we found have even been associated with infant deaths.
Sign our petition and tell Facebook Marketplace to get banned products off its platform.
Finding Rules for Sellers Wasn’t Always Easy
You might assume that if a marketplace doesn’t allow a particular baby product to be sold, it would be easy to find that information. But CR found that none of the four platforms maintained a comprehensive list of banned or restricted products. Researchers could find partial lists on eBay, Facebook Marketplace, and Craigslist, but had to navigate through the sites rather than simply finding the information through the marketplace search experience. Mercari did not have a list of banned children’s products available.
The lists also varied in what they covered. For example, eBay’s policies went the furthest, prohibiting recalled or banned products including infant inclined sleepers, padded crib bumpers, and weighted sleep sacks, and restricting used cribs in a way that effectively prevented the sale of drop-side cribs. But its policies did not specifically prohibit water beads marketed to children, despite the company having previously told CR it had a global policy covering them.
And for sellers, the stakes can be even higher. Federal law prohibits the sale of recalled consumer products, including through online resale markets. The Consumer Product Safety Commission specifically says that laws apply to consumers selling used products online and that it is illegal to sell a recalled product.
A parent cleaning out the nursery may have no idea that the product they’re listing has since been recalled or banned.
Sellers Didn’t Always Get the Help They Needed
Many people selling on these platforms aren’t professional resellers–they’re parents passing along an outgrown stroller, a crib their child no longer needs, or a high chair that’s been sitting in the basement. And they shouldn’t have to be product-safety experts to know what they can legally sell.
CR evaluated whether marketplaces educated sellers about prohibited products when they created an account and went through the process of listing an item. The answer was inconsistent.
Facebook Marketplace and eBay did not provide a list of banned products when sellers created an account. Craigslist and Mercari provided information about prohibited products, but it did not specifically identify all of the children’s products CR evaluated, including inclined sleepers, padded crib bumpers, and drop-side cribs. Guidance remained incomplete when sellers went on to list products: eBay and Mercari still did not provide a list of banned products, while the information provided by Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist did not include all of the banned children’s products CR evaluated.
That’s a missed opportunity, says Shin. “These platforms are better equipped than consumers to stay up to date on recalls, warnings, and product bans and even prevent unsafe products from entering the marketplace,” she says. “They should, to the greatest extent that they can, help keep consumers who are looking to sell products informed with the right information and implement strong mechanisms to keep others safe.”
Barry has seen this problem firsthand. She says she’s personally contacted dozens of sellers who were attempting to sell recalled or banned infant products.
“The overwhelming majority had absolutely no idea,” she says. The problem isn’t necessarily that parents are deliberately putting other children at risk. It’s that they may not realize a product they’re trying to pass along shouldn’t be sold.
CR also tested the listing process itself. When researchers filled out the listing form with information about a used car seat, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, and Mercari provided no additional safety prompts. eBay required the evaluator to select “New” after uploading a photo, although the listing could still describe the seat as used. None of the four platforms required a model number when researchers created a listing for a portable generator that resembled a recalled model.
In other words, don’t assume a product is safe to sell simply because the platform lets you list it.
Reporting a Problem Wasn’t Always Simple
Consumers can be an important safety net for online marketplaces. If a prohibited product slips through, another shopper may recognize it and flag it. But first, they have to be able to report it. CR evaluated the platforms’ reporting tools to see how easy it was for consumers to flag potentially unsafe or prohibited products.
eBay had the strongest reporting process of the four. Consumers could select “recalled or unsafe” as the reason for reporting a listing, add a note explaining their concern, receive confirmation that the report had been submitted, and then receive information about the company’s decision and action.
Other platforms offered fewer options. Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, and Mercari didn’t allow consumers to specifically flag a product as banned or recalled or add a note explaining their concern. And reporting a product didn’t consistently result in its removal.
eBay removed a padded crib bumper within 30 minutes of CR’s report but did not remove a reported in-bed sleeper. Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, and Mercari did not remove the products CR reported.
“Consumers can play an important role in alerting platforms to potentially unsafe or prohibited products,” Shin says. “But reporting mechanisms need to be easy to find and use.”
CR recommends that marketplaces provide a dedicated option to report products as recalled, banned, or unsafe and allow consumers to provide additional information.
Should You Resell Baby Gear That Was Safe When You Bought It?
This is where secondhand shopping gets particularly complicated.
A parent may have purchased a crib, high chair, or other product years ago and used it without incident. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s still the right product to pass along.
Safety standards change. Products are redesigned. Recalls are issued. New hazards are identified.
Cribs are a good example. Federal crib safety standards became mandatory in 2011 and apply to new and used cribs placed into commerce. The CPSC says cribs manufactured or sold before the June 2011 effective date are very likely to be noncompliant, unsafe, and illegal to sell or distribute.
Hoffman also points out that parents need to know whether a product is appropriate for their child’s age and developmental stage, not simply whether the child appears to fit in it.
That’s particularly important for car seats and booster seats, where age, height, weight, and developmental readiness all factor into safe use.
The same principle applies to products marketed as sleep aids.
Parents may encounter older baby products online that were once promoted as ways to help babies sleep but are not safefor infant sleep. As Hoffman points out, marketing can sometimes make a product sound like a solution to a problem that is actually part of normal infant development.
“Just because you can doesn’t mean you should,” he says.
That is particularly worth remembering when a secondhand listing looks like a bargain. The fact that someone is willing to sell you a product doesn’t mean the product is still appropriate for your baby.
What the Platforms Are Doing About It
CR shared the findings with the four platforms in July and asked each to respond and make changes.
Facebook Marketplace, eBay, and Mercari engaged with CR about the evaluation, and CR verified some changes before publication. On eBay, for example, water beads marketed to children were added to the publicly available list of prohibited items. Mercari committed to updating its reporting tool to include a “recalled or banned product” option; CR will verify that change after it goes live. Facebook Marketplace added drop-side cribs, water beads marketed to kids, and weighted infant sleep wearables to its list of prohibited items after our conversation and made those lists more accessible in the process.
CR is calling on platforms to go further by strengthening their pre-listing screening, proactively searching existing listings for prohibited products, improving reporting systems, and giving sellers clear, easy-to-find safety information at the point when they’re listing an item. Some of the platforms described how they are currently working toward these goals.
A spokesperson for eBay told CR, “We take a number of steps and precautions to keep buyers safe. For example, we partner with global safety agencies to remove unsafe or non-compliant items from our marketplace. We don’t allow items that could harm buyers or pose health or safety risks. That includes children’s items that are banned, recalled, or don’t meet safety regulations.”
Mercari’s U.S. CEO, Jeff LeBeau, told CR, “Keeping dangerous items off Mercari is a core priority. We’ve proactively created an excellent working relationship with the Consumer Product Safety Commission and use a multi-pronged approach to identify and remove banned, recalled, and restricted products from our marketplace. Our team monitors CPSC announcements, receives early notifications where available, and makes every effort to remove recalled items within 24 hours. We also maintain and regularly refine keyword-based filters for recalled product names and similar descriptions, flagging listings for review and removal as appropriate. Often, when an item is removed, the users offering the item are not aware that it has been recalled, and they appreciate the information. In addition, Mercari users can report potentially recalled or unsafe products, and our staff manually reviews the marketplace daily. While we are constantly working against bad actors trying to circumvent our best efforts, these efforts altogether block or remove hundreds of products each month.”
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Facebook Marketplace, pointed to its existing online guidance for sellers and buyers, including its Commerce Policy, Help Center, and Recalled Products Policy. The site’s policies and guidance for sellers, buyers, and traders note that recalled products are prohibited and that platform users are responsible for complying with all applicable laws and regulations.
Some platforms told CR that they are using technology, in addition to human oversight, to help identify and remove more problematic products faster. Meta said that its Marketplace platform uses automated detections as well as human review to help find and remove violative listings.
“To identify listings that may correspond to these banned and recalled products at scale, we use a combination of AI models, keyword-based rules, and, where appropriate, manual review,” an eBay spokesperson said. “This enables us to identify and remove listings for recalled products in accordance with our policies. These measures are delivering tangible results to improve overall product safety on our platform. eBay’s product safety algorithms prevented 21 million potentially unsafe product listings globally in 2025. Additionally, 98.2 percent of all prohibited listings were blocked at the point of listing creation and never appeared on the marketplace.”
According to a spokesperson for Mercari, the platform uses “a combination of automated detection, technical signals, user reports, and human review to identify suspicious messages and accounts. As bad actors adapt their tactics, we continue to refine our systems and enforcement processes to combat phishing and other dangerous behavior and help keep our users safe.” These tools are used in combination with manual oversight, according to Mercari: “At the same time, we do not view technology as a substitute for human judgment. Our Trust & Safety teams continue to review outcomes, test system performance, and refine our tools to help ensure they are doing the job effectively and fairly. More broadly, Mercari is engaged in a company-wide effort to become AI-native wherever doing so can improve the marketplace experience, strengthen user safety, and help us respond more quickly to emerging risks.”
Craigslist did not respond to requests for comment.
What Parents Should Know Before Buying — or Selling
Secondhand marketplaces shouldn’t be off-limits for parents–but they need to work better for everyone. For many families, secondhand products are an important way to stretch a budget. But experts say it’s worth being selective about what you buy used.
Know exactly what you’re buying.Ask the seller for the manufacturer, model number, and other identifying information, and check the product label for details such as the date of manufacture. Without that information, it may be impossible to determine whether the product has expired or been recalled.
Check the product yourself.Search recalls.gov, the CPSC’s recall database, and the manufacturer’s website. Don’t assume the seller–or the marketplace–has already done it. The CPSC specifically recommends checking its recall database before reselling a used product and says it is illegal to sell a recalled product.
Know the age and size limits. Pay attention to the manufacturer’s age, height, weight, and developmental requirements. A product that’s appropriate for one child may not be appropriate for another.
Be especially cautious with car seats and sleep products.Neonatologist Joanna Parga-Belinkie, MD, co-host on the American Academy of Pediatrics’ podcast, Pediatrics on Call, says she would not buy car seats, cribs, crib mattresses, or breast pumps secondhand. Be particularly wary of inclined sleepers, in-bed sleepers, infant loungers, and crib bumpers, which are all either banned or now subject to much stricter standards and should not be used for infant sleep.
Ask about the product’s history. How long was it used? How was it stored? Was it ever repaired, modified, or involved in an accident? Are all the original parts included? For products like car seats, a seller who can’t answer those questions may not be able to give you the assurance you need.
Don’t improvise missing parts.Something that fits isn’t necessarily an approved replacement. The CPSC specifically advises against selling broken or wobbly nursery furniture or durable infant products that are missing parts, even if they haven’t been recalled.
Inspect it in person before you commit. A listing photo is not a guarantee. If the product is cracked, damaged, unusually worn, wobbly, smells strongly of smoke or pets, is missing parts, or simply isn’t what you expected, it’s okay to walk away. You don’t owe the seller a purchase because you drove across town to see it.
And if you’re the seller, do the same homework before posting.A product isn’t automatically safe to sell just because you used it with your own child without a problem. Check the model and date, search for recalls, make sure all parts are present, and don’t list anything that has been recalled or prohibited.
Remember, too, that the best deal isn’t always the cheapest one.
“Value needs to be interpreted in terms of more than just the dollar amount, or the perceived savings,” Hoffman says.
That’s perhaps the simplest way to approach secondhand baby gear. There are plenty of things worth buying used. But when you’re talking about something designed to protect a baby, especially when you won’t be able to watch every second it’s being used, a few minutes of research can be worth far more than the money you save.
And if you can’t verify that a product is safe?
Walk away.
