Sekundäre Märkte?: Zum Wiener und Salzburger Gebrauchtwarenhandel im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert

Few historians have followed the entire “life-cycle” of a product; especially “secondary” forms of use, transfer and alteration – for example repair works or the trade in used goods – often have been neglected. This exclusion of secondary markets and secondary product cycles seems problematic, since they were – regarding the factors of production – of a specific importance for pre-modern economy and society: for many craftsmen especially in the textile branch repair works formed a significant part of their daily business, in addition numerous people found possibilities to earn a living in fields that specialized on trading with second-hand ware or the collecting and reprocessing of scrap materials. Especially metals or glass, but also textiles (rags for paper making) were recycled to a considerable extent, since raw material was often scarce or expensive; therefore many consumers (especially members of lower urban strata) were reliant on the use of second-hand commodities and materials until the nineteenth century. My study focuses on the retail of second-hand commodities during the seventeenth and eighteenth century in the towns of Salzburg and Vienna, but it also discusses findings from other European cities.