Speaking of used mattresses, here’s a great post from the Best of Craigslist:
Zzzzzzz…..King Size Used Sealy Posturpedic Celestial Mattress
Date: 2005-06-08, 10:24AM EDT
For Sale: 1 King Size Used Sealy Posturepedic Celestial mattress. Just the mattress. No box springs, frame, or headboard. $40. There are two things to consider when buying a new mattress: support and comfort. These are irrelevant here, this is a used mattress. For a used mattress, there are four things to consider (the 4 S’s): source, smell, stains, and shape.
Source: My wife and I moved into our house in 2002. The house was completely empty, except for the king bed. The bed was gigantic, and envisioning all the kinky stuff we could do, I decided to keep it. (I never got to do any of that stuff. Apparently bed size was not the only barrier my wife had to doing all that kinky stuff.) I have no idea how long it had been there already, but I will disclose a few tidbits about the previous owners of the house, who lived there since the house was built in 1965. The man had Alzheimers and the woman was obese (I’ll describe how I know this in the section below entitled “shape”). The woman died, and the man couldn’t tell me how old the mattress was (I asked the guy’s daughter, who handled the house-sale transaction, but she didn’t know and the man wasn’t lucid). Oh… I should mention that the woman didn’t die in the bed. She died when she fell down the steps, which is a little tidbit that my neighbors didn’t tell me until like two years after we had moved in (I bet we have a ghost). So I have no idea how old the mattress is… I’m not an expert, but I would guess that it is 12-14 years old. But I really have no idea. 12-14 is an honest guess… could be more, could be less. I have little experience estimating the age of mattresses.
Smell: This one smells great… that is, it doesn’t smell at all. It smells exactly like Iocane powder, a deadly and completely odorless poison.
Stains: None. Really. My wife and I have always used a thick mattress pad/cover on this, and the previous owners must have done the same. Now the fabric has some fading, but it definitely shows no signs of violent murders, incontinence, or lewd acts. No stains.
Shape: I think this is what you need to think about before buying this mattress. I think that one side of the mattress is a little mashed down (maybe by an inch or so - remember the obese woman from above?). Not a lot… you can’t tell by looking at it. In fact, my wife claims I am imagining it. But I can detect a definite “ridge” in the middle of the bed, between where each person would lie. Again, it is not obvious, as my wife claims that she can’t even tell it is there, and when I bring it up she goes into what she considers a very funny monlogue about “The Princess and the Pea”. She’s thinks she’s a riot. If slight-to-imperceptible mashing would drive you nuts, find another mattress. If constant mocking drove me nuts, I’d find another wife.
So that’s the 4 S’s. I am a fairly picky person, and I’ve been sleeping on this thing for the last 3 years without problems, so it is pretty decent. If you are looking for a mattress for your summer sublet, this is it. If you always wanted a king size for extracurriculars (this is craigslist, so I am assuming most of you need room for threesomes and farm animals), this will do nicely. If you are cheap and not terribly picky about what you sleep on, this is great. If you are a college kid who thinks it would be cool to have a gigantic king bed, perfect. Even if you meet one of the above but are very averse to stains and smells, you are still in good shape with this one – no stains, no smells. But if you are trying to decide whether to buy the $4500 Beauty-Double-Comfort-Plushderful-Blissomatic or my $40 who-knows-how-old-it-is mattress, don’t waste your time. If you have chronic back problems, don’t waste your time. And if you are a pain in the ass to perform a simple $40 transaction with, don’t waste my time.
(If you don’t have a car, maybe I’ll deliver it if you are close by for $35 or so. I know that’s a lot, but I really don’t want to deliver it. And when I say deliver it, I mean I will drive it to your place and help YOU get it to your bedroom. King mattresses are big - about 7’ x 7’ - and they weigh too much for me to carry alone. And come to think of it, I’ll only deliver it if you Paypal me the money first, since I REALLY don’t want to drive it to your place just to have you say “Oh, I thought it was brand new” and not buy it.)
To summarize: no smells, no stains, slight-to-imperceptible mashing. Used for the last 3 years by a fairly picky sleeper and neat freak, and used for some number of years before that by an obese woman and a man in the throes of dementia. No smells, no stains (that’s clearly my selling point). Possible to arrange delivery. I’m a nice guy and easy to deal with for this kind of stuff.
