My Latest Purchase

I just invested in handmade goods.

Etsy (ticker symbol: ETSY) is one you probably know.

If you've ever bought a hand-lettered birthday card, a pair of earrings some woman soldered together at her kitchen table, or a slightly ridiculous coffee mug that made you laugh out loud, there's a good chance it came from Etsy. Etsy is basically the world's biggest handmade craft fair, except it lives online and never closes. More than five million small sellers—jewelry makers, potters, vintage collectors, wedding stationers, the person who somehow made custom pet portraits into a full-time job—have a shop there. And something like 87 million buyers show up looking for a gift or a treat that has a real person behind it, not a factory.

So how does Etsy actually make money? Refreshingly simple, honestly. Etsy doesn't make or ship anything itself. It just runs the marketplace and takes a small cut every time something sells, plus a tiny listing fee and a fee for processing the payment. Sellers can also pay extra to advertise their listings so more shoppers see them—kind of like paying for a better booth spot at the craft fair. Add it all up, and Etsy keeps a bit over a quarter of every dollar that changes hands on the site. That's the whole business model. No warehouses, no delivery trucks, no inventory sitting around collecting dust. Just a website that connects a maker in Idaho with a buyer in Florida, and a small toll every time that connection turns into a sale.

Back in 2019, Etsy bought Reverb, a marketplace for used and vintage music gear, for $275 million. Then in 2021, they went much bigger and bought Depop, a used clothing app, for $1.6 billion. The idea was to build a "house of brands" — stack a few different marketplaces under one roof and grow faster together than Etsy could on its own. It's the kind of ambitious, expansion-by-acquisition move a lot of companies make when the good times are rolling and the money is cheap.

It didn't really pan out. Etsy sold Reverb in 2025, and just this year sold Depop to eBay for $1.2 billion—a real step down from the $1.6 billion they paid for it. So no, the acquisition chapter didn't create the value they hoped for. But honestly, I'd rather own a company that admits that and course-corrects than one that keeps throwing good money after bad to save face. Etsy is back to being just Etsy now—no side projects, no distracted management team splitting attention three ways, just the core marketplace that made the company special in the first place: connecting makers with people who want something real.

Here's the part where I get specific. Etsy is trading around $74 a share right now. I ran it through my usual valuation process—the one from Part Three of my book, The Loving Truth About Money, where I estimate what I think a share should actually be worth and then cut that number in half to get a conservative buy price. My buy price for Etsy right now is $81 so I feel comfortable buying at this current price of $74. Not because I can predict exactly what Etsy will be worth in ten years, but because buying at a discount to my estimate is the best protection I've got when my guesses (inevitably) turn out to be wrong.

I like this one. It's a simple business I can explain in one breath, it's full of small makers I'd genuinely love to see thrive, and right now, it seems to be on sale.

Here are the details of the trade order I placed online with my brokerage firm:

LEGAL, INVESTMENT AND TAX NOTICE: This information is not intended to be and should not be treated as legal advice, investment advice or tax advice. The reader should under no circumstances rely upon this information as a substitute for obtaining specific advice from their own advisors.