Cosmetics

Gift sets from Mother’s Day and Christmas:

explain why so many sealed boxes appear a few weeks after each holiday. A lotion paired with a body mist, a small palette with a lip gloss, a shampoo and conditioner tied up with a ribbon: plenty of them never leave the drawer until someone lists them. A set is easiest to find under its most valuable piece. Lipstick, foundation and palettes go under make-up, creams and sunscreen under skin care, and dye and conditioner under hair care. Nail polish has its own place in hand and nail care, shower gel and body splash in bath and shower, and perfume in fragrances.

Foundation and face creams between Huehuetenango and the coast:

get chosen differently. In the cool, dry air of the western highlands buyers lean towards richer creams and satin or dewy finishes, and the flat matte foundation is the one that comes back up for sale. Down in Retalhuleu or Puerto Barrios the heat and damp push people the other way, towards labels that say oil-free, long-wear or water-resistant. Shade still matters more than finish. Foundation is the product most often resold after a single try, because it looked right on a screen and wrong in daylight, so a swatch photographed by a window tells a buyer more than the shade name does.

A sealed gift set against the same pieces bought singly:

is the comparison that sets the price. A boxed lotion and mist set or a small make-up kit costs around Q300 to Q650 on the shelf, and a single drugstore mascara or lipstick around Q100 to Q200. Piece for piece the set comes out cheaper than buying the same things one at a time, and a sealed one passed on by someone who never chose it leaves room to negotiate on top of that, more so when its expiry is less than a year away.

The open-jar symbol and the lot code on the base:

tell you more than any photo of the front. The small drawing of an open jar with a number and an M gives the months a product keeps once opened. The lot code, a short run of letters and numbers stamped on the bottom, should match on the box and on the tube or bottle inside. A missing code, one that rubs off under a thumb, or a box printed blurred or a shade off points to a copy, and copied creams, face masks and perfumes do turn up in Guatemala. Cellophane should be tight and neatly folded, not loose or melted shut. Testers, marked as such and often in a plain box, were made for shop counters and may have been tried, so judge them by the same code and printing and pay less for them. An opened jar is worth far less than a sealed one, because nobody can show how it was kept. If the seller lets you open it, look and smell: a cream that has separated, darkened or turned sour, or nail polish gone thick and stringy, is finished whatever the date says.

A cosmetics listing photographed from underneath:

gets answered sooner, because the base is where the expiry date, the lot code and the open-jar symbol are printed. Take one shot of the front with the cellophane on, one of the bottom, and for make-up a daylight swatch with the shade name or number in frame. Say whether the box was opened, whether anything inside was tried, and where it has been kept: a bedroom cupboard, not a sunny windowsill. If you split a set, say so in the title. Someone coming in from Escuintla for a Christmas set will want to turn the box over and read the date before paying, so leave the cellophane on until then.