How to buy riding gear without buying it twice

The helmet is the one piece of riding equipment that should never be bought used.

Somewhere around the fourth or fifth riding lesson, the barn hands you a list. Boots. Breeches. A helmet that actually fits. Gloves. Eventually, if your child keeps going, a show coat and a shirt with a collar that stays put.

You are now standing in front of a decision that every sports parent recognizes, and it is uncomfortable for the same reason every time. You are being asked to spend real money on equipment before anyone knows whether this will last. Your child is nine. In six months they may be obsessed, or they may want to do gymnastics instead.

The instinct, understandably, is to buy the cheapest version of everything and see what happens. In most youth sports, that instinct is correct. In riding it is expensive, and it is worth understanding why before you spend anything.

Two things are true at once, and only one of them is a risk

The first is that your child may stop. That is not pessimism, it is the base rate. Across all youth sports, the average age at which children stop playing is just under 13, according to the Aspen Institute’s national youth athlete survey. Riding holds on to riders better than most sports, but the possibility is real and it is reasonable to plan around it.

The second is not a risk at all. It is a certainty. Children between six and twelve grow about two and a half inches a year, and gain four to seven pounds, with a sharper spurt arriving around twelve for girls and a couple of years later for boys. Whatever you buy this fall will not fit in two years. Not might. Will not.

So the question is not whether the gear will stop being used. It is what happens to it when it does.

The part that makes riding different

In most youth sports the equipment is worth nothing once it is outgrown. Cleats have been run into the ground. Shin pads are scuffed and sized for a specific small leg. Nobody is buying them, and the money is simply gone.

Riding equipment does not behave this way. A show coat is tailored and lined and built to be brushed down and worn across seasons. Breeches are reinforced at the knee and seat. Tall boots are leather and get resoled rather than replaced. A child outgrows these things while they are still, in every meaningful sense, new.

Which produces an unusual situation. The cheap version of a riding wardrobe loses effectively all of its value, because nobody wants a worn synthetic coat in a size that is no longer useful. The good version loses a fraction of its value, because it is still a good coat and there is another child three inches shorter who needs one.

Run the numbers once and the strategy picks itself

It helps to look at real prices rather than general advice.

New show coats at a large US tack retailer currently run from around $70 for an entry-level synthetic up to roughly $600 for a premium brand, with most of the mid-range sitting between $170 and $300. On specialist resale marketplaces, premium coats from names like Equiline and Charles Ancona list in the region of $420 to $575, while children’s breeches and riding tights frequently list around $20.

Now take the same child through two growth spurts. Buying new budget breeches three times, at perhaps $60 a pair, costs $180 and leaves you with three pairs nobody wants. Buying used breeches three times at $20 costs $60, and the pairs your child grows out of can go back onto the same marketplace. The gap is not marginal, and it widens every time the sport gets more serious, because the items get more expensive.

The same logic runs upward. A quality coat bought used and sold on when outgrown may cost you the difference between purchase and resale, which can be a small fraction of its price. A budget coat bought new costs you all of it. That inverts the usual advice, so it is worth saying plainly: the expensive option is often the economical one, as long as you treat the purchase as temporary from the beginning.

The exception, and it is not negotiable

Everything above applies to clothing. It does not apply to the helmet, and this is the one place where the cost conversation should stop entirely.

Riding is not a gentle sport in this respect. Around 70,000 people a year are treated in American emergency rooms for injuries related to equestrian activities, and 60% or more of horse-related deaths involve head injuries, according to the University of Connecticut’s equine program. The same source notes that ASTM and SEI approved helmets have reduced riding-related head injuries by around 30%, and severe head injuries by around 50%.

Two rules follow. Buy a helmet that is certified to the ASTM standard and SEI tested, and buy it new. A used helmet carries a history you cannot see. Equestrian helmets are built to absorb a single impact, and a helmet that has taken a fall can be compromised in ways that leave no visible mark. The same reasoning applies to body protectors.

A certified helmet is not the expensive part of this list. It is the part you simply do not economize on.

What to check before you buy anything used

Secondhand riding clothing is easy to assess if you know the four places wear actually shows, and a seller who answers these questions properly is usually a seller worth buying from.

On breeches, look at the knee patch and the seat, which take the friction. Silicone grip wears smooth and shiny before it fails outright. On a show coat, check the lining at the armpit and the inside of the cuffs, and ask whether it has been dry cleaned rather than washed. On tall boots, the zipper is the component that fails, and replacing one costs enough to matter, so ask whether it runs smoothly along its whole length. On anything leather, ask for a photograph of the inside of the ankle, where creasing is heaviest.

Ask for measurements rather than relying on the size label, because sizing differs between European and American brands and a child between sizes is better served by a number than a letter.

What to actually do, in order

Start with the helmet, new, properly fitted at a shop where someone measures your child’s head rather than guessing. Replace it after any fall, and in any case after about five years, because the foam degrades with heat, sweat and time whether or not it has been hit.

Then buy the clothing secondhand, and buy it good. Boots, breeches and a show coat from a quality brand in used condition will usually cost less than new budget equivalents and will look considerably better in the ring. If your child is heading toward their first competition, this parent’s guide and checklist sets out what is genuinely required versus what the barn simply likes to see.

Then, and this is the step most families miss, sell the previous size as soon as it stops fitting rather than when you get around to it. A coat outgrown in April has a buyer in April. The same coat in a closet three years later is a donation. Specialist marketplaces now exist for exactly this, and used equestrian clothing is organized there by discipline and rider sizing rather than the vague categories that made general resale sites so frustrating for this.

The number worth keeping in mind

The average American family spent $1,016 on one child’s primary sport in 2024, a 46% rise in five years and roughly twice the rate of general inflation, according to Project Play’s parent survey with Utah State and Louisiana Tech. Across all of a child’s sports the figure approaches $1,500 a year.

Riding sits at the higher end of that range, and nothing in this article will make it a cheap sport. What it can be is a sport where the equipment money comes back. You are not really buying a wardrobe. You are holding one for a couple of years and passing it to the next child, and if you buy with that in mind from the first lesson, the arithmetic looks very different by the third year.

Your child will outgrow all of it. That was always going to happen. The only question is whether the gear leaves the house as a donation or as a check.