Cosmetics
Buy and sell cosmetics in Costa Rica.
A foundation ordered through a Miami forwarder arrives a shade too dark, and sending it back costs more than finding it a buyer here. That is how a good deal of sealed make-up and skin care ends up second-hand, alongside new stock from beauty businesses and soap made by small Costa Rican producers. Shampoo in family-size bottles and nail colour bought for one occasion turn up too, new and pre-owned. Whatever the product, its value comes down to the same three things: whether it has been opened, what it is made of, and how it was kept.
Make-up is bought by shade, hair care by the bottle:
the two ends of cosmetics behave very differently once they change hands. Make-up and hand and nail care are small and personal, and searched by the exact shade name, so a foundation or a nail colour only finds a buyer who already knows it matches. Hair care and bath and shower products work the other way round: big bottles bought for the whole household, where brand and size count for more than taste. Skin care sits in between. Almost nobody wants a moisturiser someone else has opened, while sealed lotions from body creams and lotions and sunscreen pass between owners without fuss. Fragrances are the one family where a used bottle is an ordinary buy.
Powder, oil or water in the formula:
what a product is made of tells you how well it has kept. Pressed powders such as eyeshadow and blush, oils, lip balms and bar soap contain no water, so they last a long time and an opened one can still be a sensible buy. Anything made with water, from body lotion and liquid foundation to conditioner, depends on its preservatives, and they start losing ground the day the product is opened and handled. A pump, a tube or an airless bottle keeps fingers and air out; a jar that has been dipped into does not. A half-used jar cream is worth very little to anyone, while a pump bottle at the same level can still be worth having. Scrubs and masks that get wet in the shower go off fastest once they are open.
Handmade soap and body butter from Costa Rican makers:
small producers around the country make cold-process soap with coconut and olive oil, body butters and natural creams, and sell them at markets and from home. A cold-process bar is cured for several weeks before it is sold and keeps well after that; age shows as a stale smell or small orange spots on the surface, a sign the oils have started to turn. The handmade product to be careful with is a cream or lotion made with water. Ask when the batch was made, ask to see the ingredient list, and choose a recent one over anything that has sat on a shelf.
A cream that has separated or a polish that has gone stringy:
both are finished, and so is anything that smells sour, rancid or metallic or has changed colour. The same goes for a cream with oil sitting on top or a foundation that will not come back together when shaken. Nail polish that has thickened, strings off the brush or stays separated after a good roll between the palms is past saving. On a sealed item, look at the seal itself: the foil under the cap on shampoo and cream jars, the plastic band round a pump, the sticker across a palette. A palette sold as unused should show every shade flat and untouched, with no dip in the middle. Copies tend to give themselves away in those pans, which sit crooked or lift out, and in a smell nothing like the original.
The foundation that arrived in the wrong shade:
it sells on detail. Put the brand, the product and the exact shade name and number in the title, and photograph the seal and the bottom of the bottle with its printed date. If the label is in English only, say so. For anything opened, say roughly how much is left, whether it was used with fingers or a spatula, and where it was kept. Someone travelling from Pérez Zeledón for a sealed foundation cannot try it on, so the shade name in your title is what tells them the trip is worth making.