Online ads turn desperate: 'Please buy anything you can to help out'

TOUGH TIMES | Many selling off possessions just to stay afloat

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.

''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, N.C. One former affluent customer is now unemployed and had to unload Hermes leather jackets, Versace jeans and silk shirts.

At Craigslist, which has become an online flea market for the world, the number of for-sale listings has soared 70 percent since last July. In March, the number of listings more than doubled to almost 15 million from the year before.

Craigslist CEO Jeff Buckmaster acknowledged the increasing popularity of selling all sort of items on the Web but said the rate of growth is ''moving above the usual trend line.'' He said he was amazed at the desperate tone in some ads.

In Daleville, Ala., Ellona Bateman-Lee has turned to eBay and flea markets to empty her three-bedroom mobile home of DVDs, VCRs, stereos and televisions.

She said she needs the cash to help pay for soaring food and utility bills and mounting health care expenses since her husband, Bob, suffered an electric shock on the job in 2006 and is disabled.

Among her most painful sales: her grandmother's tea kettle. She sold it for $6 on eBay.

''My grandmother raised me, so it hurt,'' she said. ''We've had bouts here and there, but we always got by. This time, it's different.''

Economists say it is difficult to compare the selling trend with other tough times because the Internet, only in wide use since the mid-1990s, has made it much easier to unload goods.

But clearly, cash-strapped people are selling their belongings at bargain prices, with a flood of listings for secondhand cars, clothing and furniture hitting the market in recent months, particularly since January.

On Craigslist, Buckmaster said, three of the four fastest-growing categories are tied to gas -- recreational vehicles like campers and trailers, cars and trucks, and boats.

Secondhand buyers want better deals now as well, driving prices down 25 percent to 35 percent below what items commanded a year ago, one analyst estimated.

Bateman-Lee said she received only $30 for her TV and $45 for her DVD player at a flea market. She doesn't have too much left to sell, but she's going back to ''sort through more things.''

Her $30 water bill is due.

AP