> Now, piles may be crazier, but sell a Tesla?

I had a friend who was moving country and wanted to sell his Porche. Someone offered to buy it for a reasonable price, but wanted to pay cash. My friend thought that sounded really dodgy; so he agreed on the condition that they both physically go to a bank teller and have the bank teller deposit the money in his account as he watched. The other guy agreed; so that's what they did. He showed up with a giant bag full of bills, just like the big drug deals in the movies. At that point my friend felt he'd done his duty, and that anything dodgy to be Somebody Else's Problem to detect / deal with.

Afterwards I heard that Travelers prefer dealing in cash; so there wasn't necessarily anything dodgy going on (other than presumably the general effort to avoid scrutiny).

Just because the money itself was legitimate, doesn't mean something shady wasn't going on. The buyer could have been laundering money, with your friend actively helping him. For his sake, I hope he verified the other person's details and saved them, because if he deposited >$10k cash, it was reported to the government, and he'd be responsible for saying where it came from, and they may not like the answer.

Well for one, in the UK, when you sell a car, the seller fills out a little chit and mails it to the government, who then mail a new title to the buyer. So at least there'd be record of the sale, and an address to start to track where the money came from. In addition I think he thought the bank's security cameras would add critical information about the seller. Not sure what other verification he may have done.

Do people who buy luxury goods often just sell them for cash if they don't like them?

That seems strange.

Yes. And for many other reasons.

Some luxury brands intentionally limit production of popular items and only sell them to their best customers. Since everyone wants the limited things, they buy lots of the lower tier, unlimited stuff to become a VIP customer and get offered a slot to buy a limited item. Ferrari is famous for limiting sales of their highest end cars to certain clients. High end hand bag producers limit sales of their most popular models to approved clients only. High end watches are similar as well.

If you can't afford all the extra stuff you had to buy along the way, you can try to resell it and get some of the cash back. If you need more cash, you can resell the limited availability items as well, often for a significant profit over the MSRP, even after the middleman's cut.

Fashionphile, The Real Real, Ann's Fabulous Finds, Yugi's Closet are all active companies in this space.

Many people use luxury goods as a medium to transport significant wealth around. You'll get questioned for bringing more than $10.000 in cash in or out of the UK or most of the western world. But you get an expensive watch and it'll likely slip.

The resale value on most luxury watches is terrible though.

People who don't like attention from law enforcement do.

Interestingly, cash is the most interesting thing for law enforcement because they can legally steal it.

If you have a lot of money coming in ... not sure you NEED to sell good for cash.

It's just a weird choice IMO.

I certainly have items that I could sell but don't want to deal with the time actually selling it.