By Joe Jackson, Outdoor

Purchasing used gear makes learning a new, expensive sport like skiing much less cost prohibitive, but it’s easy to waste money on junk.

To take some of the guesswork out of the process, I interviewed Josh Sims, owner of The Gear Fix, an outdoor gear repair and consignment shop in Bend, Ore. Since he bought the shop in 2008, Sims has seen and made thousands of repairs, including resoling more than 1,000 climbing shoes.

Many of those repairs are the direct result of customers buying used gear that was already past its retirement date.

Read the whole story