Secondhand Puzzles

[puzzledout]

lighthearted

AIBU - to say never buy a secondhand puzzle, in case this happens to you!

See photo attached

😭

You understand my pain 😆

I like this idea.

Once bought a second hand puzzle that had all the edges missing!

That's cruel, I started with all the edges.

I recently started buying second hand from eBay as I got back in to doing them. I think I've been lucky because I've bought about 7 or 8 1000 and 1500 piece jigsaws which have all been complete and in excellent condition.

Well yes it's a risk you take with secondhand puzzles which is why I always hesitate to do so. However I bought a new puzzle from The Works for the family for Xmas and there was a piece missing from that too!

My worst experience was 80 pieces missing from a brand new ravensburger puzzle. It only had 300 pieces...

Please don't tell me that!

If I get a jigsaw with missing pieces I recycle it as soon as I "finish" it, to remove it from the Jigsaw gene pool.
My worst was a 3000-piece with 17 missing pieces and two random interloper pieces from other jigsaws.
I recycled the jigsaw but kept the spare pieces in case the universe sends me the jigsaws they came from.

yabu
its worth it. new jigsaw = £14
charity shop = £1.99- £3.00

Ha! I love this philosophy, doing your bit for the jigsaw gene pool. 😁

How can you count the pieces though? Jigsaws always state a round number of pieces on thebox but in reality they don't have exactly this number of pieces, it will always be the number of side pieces x the number of top/bottom edge pieces, unless it is a weirdly-shaped one. These are rarely nice, round, 1000/2000 etc numbers.

Maybe I'm weird but I'm not bothered by a couple of missing pieces. I do think it should be stated but I don't think it matters if they tell you where it is or not.

I have found though that my local second hand shop doesn't seem to sell jigsaws :( Perhaps this is why.

Not at the works, as I've now discovered, around £6

Also, I didn't get it from a charity shop and I paid £3.

I love this!

But many jigsaws aren't exactly the number of pieces stated on the box - they usually round to 500/1000/2000 - and they don't always give an exact piece count (although some do) - so that's a fairly pointless exercise.

A lot of jigsaw manufacturers offer a 'missing piece' service.

Worth googling if that happens to you.

This drives me nuts! Charity shops should NOT be allowed to sell puzzles without knowing if there are bits missing! Get a volunteer to do them if necessary!

Worst one I had (and this is true) was bought from a charity shop and when I started it I really struggled to find the straight edges. I found one.

Who ever donated it had removed every bloody straight edge except one!

(Still did it though)

But I started with the straight prices, I am a novice but I thought no other option was available!

You can do whatever you want. Starting with the edge is most common, but the puzzle police don't arrest you if you don't

I recently did a puzzle that had stripes of colour in the background. I sorted the pieces by colour, then worked my way up the puzzle stripe by stripe.

Although I'm not a novice as such I stick to 500 pieces as I get bored easily - I buy/sell a lot through eBay and only one person has come back to me saying a piece was missing. I'm very meticulous about puzzles being complete and don't know why but this person really annoyed me - low anger threshold I suppose - anyway, I've blocked them from buying from me and I have to say apart from them I've had a great experience both buying and selling through eBay. I always state that the puzzle is 'complete' because I know it is but do still get questions about whether the puzzle is complete 🤔

We sell 5-10 jigsaws a day in our charity shop and do not have the staff or volunteers to count all the pieces or actually do them. Often the donor of puzzles will write 'complete' and the date it was last completed which is helpful but generally it's pot luck with puzzles. When people ask if a puzzle is complete then we usually say that we don't know but it will be fun to find out! We have never had a puzzle returned for having missing pieces as buyers accept that it's a donated item and may not be complete.

What a waste of time. Surely they would juts count the pieces?

I think it's also a charitable endeavour in itself though - few locals who like to do jigsaws can help out and also have an activity to do for free, plus a reason to regularly pop in to the shop to be part of a community.

Every time I go in a charity shop there's always someone at the back of the shop unbagging and steaming clothes and stuff- counting jigsaw pieces is boring and eats up time that can be better spent

I’ve only ever had that once from a secondhand jigsaw. I then marked the box as one piece missing and gave away.

But had a missing piece in my brand new one recently 😳….you have to contact the company and they send you out a bag of new pieces 😂