Cribs

An all-in-one crib starts out the size of a bassinet:

it rolls beside the parents’ bed for the first months, opens out into a full crib, and later becomes a low bed, so one frame covers the stretch from newborn to preschooler. A fixed crib does a single job, with fewer parts to lose. Convertibles sit between the two: the front comes off and the frame carries on as a bed, although the piece that converts it is often sold separately and plenty of families end up buying one of the toddler beds instead. Whichever you choose, look for a mattress base that moves down once the baby can sit and then pull up. That adjustable base matters more than any carved headboard.

Solid pine or lacquered MDF under a crib’s paint:

the finish hides what a crib is built from, so ask. Solid wood, pine in the cheaper cribs and harder woods further up, takes being taken apart and rebuilt for a second child. Lacquered MDF looks smart and costs less, but its screw holes loosen every time it is dismantled, and its edges swell wherever water gets in, which counts on a tiled floor that gets mopped every morning. Where the crib was made matters as much as the wood. American cribs take the standard American mattress, while many Colombian and European ones are built round metric sizes, so measure the inside before you pick a crib mattress or a set of crib sheets. A lost bolt or base bracket for an imported model usually has to be ordered from the maker abroad, which is reason enough to favour a crib that comes with every piece of its hardware.

What a plain crib fetches once the box is gone:

a plain wooden crib starts around $250 new, and a sound second-hand one changes hands for about $90 to $140, often with its mattress thrown in. Buyers pay little for a fixed crib because its working life is short and it has nothing left to grow into. An all-in-one crib with its bassinet stage and conversion parts all present holds far more of its price, since those are exactly the pieces that go astray between one baby and the next.

The base hooks of a used crib tell its history:

lift the mattress out and look at the base and the brackets it hangs from at each height. Bent hooks, a cracked slat or a base that sits lower at one corner mean it has been forced into place or bounced on by a toddler, and that is the part holding the baby up. On MDF, look at the bottom of the legs for swelling and lifted laminate, and at every screw hole for crumbling. On solid wood, run a finger along the grain near the bolts for splits. Check that the bolts match: a crib held together with odd screws from the hardware store has lost its originals somewhere. On an all-in-one crib, lock each wheel and push. Then turn the frame over for the maker’s label with the model name, which is what you will need to track down a missing part.

Showing the base at every height before a crib comes apart:

photograph the crib assembled, then with the mattress out so the base and its brackets show, and say where it was made, what it is made of and which mattress size it takes. List every part that goes with it, such as the bassinet insert, the conversion rail, the wheels and the manual, and say whether the mattress is included. Mention marks honestly, and say whether it spent time stored in a damp storeroom, because MDF remembers. Then leave it standing until the buyer arrives. A parent coming from Vacamonte wants to watch the base drop a level and see the frame come apart in front of them, since that is the only lesson they will get in putting it back together at home.