If you purchased a Trader Joe’s mini tote, you might want to think twice about tearing off the tag and stuffing it with boxes of Vanilla Creme Joe-Joes.
The grocery chain’s new limited-edition mini totes with the tags still on are selling for $500 on eBay. The New York Post reports a listing for $1,700.
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As the New York Times reports, this April is the second time Trader Joe’s has released branded mini tote bags priced at $2.99 a pop. And their limited supply has shoppers going nuttier than a jar of Honey Roasted Cashews.
At one Trader Joe’s location in Sacramento, eager customers lined up at 5 a.m. to get their hands on the bags, and the store’s supply sold out in 15 minutes. TikTok users are documenting the craze throughout the country:
@treylonsart The Line To Get A @trader joes Bag Is Crazy. #traderjoesbag ♬ Bag Lady – Erykah Badu
The 11-by-13-inch canvas bags are offered in four pastel colorways, and have inspired a lot of love — and some wrestling matches:
@erica_grace1 Trader Joe’s mini pastel tote bags!! #traderjoes #pasteltotebags #traderjoesminitotebag #traderjoesminitotebag ♬ original sound – ✿
To combat the, well, combat, Trader Joe’s stores in Brooklyn and Manhattan staffed up with extra security, kept the bags behind registers, and limited the amount any one customer could buy.
Huge lines were met with surprise and confusion from regular shoppers not clued into the bag craze. “I thought people were here because of the tariffs,” one customer told The Times, who assumed shoppers were piling in the stock up on non-perishables.
Natasha Fischer, whose Instagram account @traderjoeslist bills itself as “The OG page for Trader Joe’s finds” said she was all about the craze last year and uses the mini bags to tote wine and snacks.
But this year? Not so much. “I have so many tote bags right now,” she told the Times. “Maybe people are in the same camp as me, you know — how many mini tote bags do you need?”
She may be alone in that feeling, as sky-high wild resale prices continue to pop up on the internet.
Trader Joe’s, whose stated mission is “providing our customers outstanding value in the form of the best quality products at the best everyday prices” made it clear that they were less than thrilled with this practice when it began last year: “To be clear, we neither condone nor support the reselling of our products and do all we can to stop the practice.”
