Carla posted a link in the comments to an
absolutely awesome article titled “
10 Essential Steps to Buying a Used Saddle Online.”
While we all want to have a saddle fitter out and/or get a custom saddle, some of us can't afford it and/or live in the middle of nowhere, so buying used online is our best option. As I was reading it, I realized
that I was already doing much of what was mentioned in the article because that’s what makes sense
to me, and that it really isn’t an accident that I’ve done so well with the two
saddles I’ve bought sight unseen.
Definitely give the article a read even if you’re not currently looking!
My process starts with knowing what I am looking for, and being reasonably well-educated in saddle fit gave me confidence here. This time, it was a 16-16.5” close contact
saddle, $300-$700 range, < 10 years old, from a good quality brand
with good leather. I have a horse that’s
slightly wider than a medium with a flat back, withers that are neither high
nor low, a well-sprung ribcage, and a tiny female rider. After I established that, I tried on some saddles I had access to in order to
see how different brands fit him, even if they were not CC saddles. This is how I ruled out brands like County
and Albion, which were far too upswept for his flat back.
 |
| Duett that I seriously considered. |
Next, I set up saved searches on my eBay app that notified
me when new listings that met my criteria were listed.
Anything that could
possibly have worked and was close to my price range was added to
my Watch List, and that’s where the
research on the individual models
began.
I always started with a Google
search for “[saddle model] reviews” which 9/10 times took me to the Chronicle
forums, where inevitably someone asked something like “What do you think about this
saddle?”
After doing research, some saddles were
removed from my first-draft watch list based on the new information.
For example, after reading a CoTH thread I removed a Duett because
clearly they are very polarizing saddles – you either really love them or you
really hate them, plus they tend to have wider twists, which would not have worked
for me, though I hear they are great for round ponies.
Finally, I whittled down the contenders and got picky. I prefer to buy from actual owners selling
their saddle for a specific reason (usually it doesn’t fit their horse), and
knocked out a couple from big resellers for that reason. Saddles with dimensions listed and lots of pictures
are my favorites also. Finally, after
watching a particular saddle for a week, I placed a bid just before the auction
closed (saddles in my size range don’t tend to generate a lot of bidders, which
I know from previously watching similar items sell on eBay, so bidding late is usually a good plan),
and won.
It worked out really well both times. My research gave me a spot-on idea of how it would fit, what I was getting, and an idea of the difficulty of reselling it if it really did not fit. Sure, it's a time-consuming process to gather that information, but saddle fitting is expensive one way or another: you're either paying for it in dollars to a fitter, or you're paying it yourself with your time. Since I'm a poor post-college young adult with more time than money, I chose the latter.
How have your sight-unseen purchases gone, and what do you do to ensure the fit is good?
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