The eBay effect

Some businesses sprout up, make a fast buck and are gone but eBay is the greatest rags-to-riches story ever told.

Even Disney, Coca-Cola and McDonald’s must look at eBay, the top internet consumer trading store, and turn green with envy.

It all began, would you believe, with a tongue-in-cheek offer to sell a broken laser pen for a few pounds when someone got in touch to buy it, they warned him it was broken.

He replied that yes, he understood that, but he was a collector of broken laser pens!

That was in 1995. Today, just 18 years later, eBay is a multi-billion-pound multinational corporation, with its HQ in California and local operations in over 30 countries.

Even among the household names, like Google, Twitter, Facebook and the rest, eBay’s story has been astonishing.

Founder and Chairman Pierre Omidyar, with a bank balance like his, is not daft. But he had a very relaxed attitude when eBay began attracting attention.

He had wanted to call his website Echobay, but someone had already registered that name, so he simply shortened it to eBay.

Within months, his site was receiving huge interest, and was hosting hundreds of thousands of auctions every day.

But Pierre didn’t decide to drop everything else in his life and focus on it properly, until its turnover was more than his modest salary.

Then, he hired teams of experts and, before long, they weren’t just selling old records and broken laser pens, but clothes, airline tickets, antiques, grand pianos and anything else you could imagine someone wanting rid of, and someone else wanting to buy.

There have been plenty of weird-and-wonderful items for sale on eBay, as you can imagine. One vast marketplace, there’s nowhere else on Earth that sells such an endless variety of goods in the one place.

From the banal to the mindblowing, you can sell or buy just about anything, and the scope is only limited by your imagination. Or your sanity!

One mother couldn’t get any peace because her little boy wanted a toy that had been sold at the McDonald’s burger chain, because his pal had one.

They didn’t make them any more, but she eventually found one, you guessed it, on eBay.

The American man who offered his forehead as advertising space simply have your company logo tattooed temporarily across his brow made a small fortune, with companies happy to rent his head for a few days.

For £2.5 million, you could buy a whole small Texan town from a super-rich local!

If you’re after Beatles memorabilia, then eBay is Heaven on Earth. Just think of anything the Fab Four might have owned, played, sung into, autographed, eaten even you’ll find it on you-know-where. But personally, we’d leave the chewing gum John Lennon chewed just where it is, thank you very much.

eBay also has plenty of dodgy dealers who wouldn’t look out of place down at a local market stall.

One such generously offers to tell you The Meaning Of Life for just $3. Wow, what a bargain!

On the other hand, eBay has been a lifesaver for those of us who finally find that book we adored as a child, and have longed to see again.

If a first-edition Dandy comic or a mint-condition Commando book are what you seek, this is the place to seek it.

Elvis Presley signed photo? Concert ticket for a Sinatra show from 50 years ago? Vintage soup tin? Five nights’ accommodation in Provence? No need to look elsewhere.

It’s reckoned countless folk around the globe now make their full-time living by trading on eBay. Get something in Huddersfield at the car boot sale, have it sold to someone in Tennessee by teatime. Profit, £150, including post and packaging.

For the rest of us, even when we aren’t in the market as a buyer or seller, eBay is the best shop in the world to be “just looking”.

It’s far more likely to make you laugh, for instance, than a wander round proper high street stores.

You won’t see a lady trying to sell snow at House of Fraser, or x-ray spectacles at Harrods. And you definitely won’t see invisibility at John Lewis.

That’s right, someone on eBay has started an auction to sell the power of invisiblity. If you splash out, we presume it arrives in the normal brown paper packaging.

Just open the envelope and put on your invisibility. As long as everyone walks straight into you, it’s working as it should.

One British lady got a fright when she opened her eBay envelope she’d ordered a belt, but was stunned when Sahara leapt out!

Sahara, a tiny Leopard gecko, had sneaked inside the envelope and travelled 120 miles across the UK, amazingly unharmed.

But we don’t want to give the impression that this amazing internet giant is just full of nasty folk looking to make some money for old rope.

The vast majority of eBay transactions see individuals selling the same things you’ll find in traditional shops.

Records, tapes, videos, clothes, cars and cosmetics do a roaring trade, although there is the occasional outrage, which eBay soon stamp out.

When one man offered to sell one of his kidneys, it really was time to call a halt.

Now, they have a strict guideline on what can’t be sold. Tobacco, booze, Nazi memorabilia, live animals and Lottery tickets are banned items.

Many of us, of course, are wary of buying or selling on the internet, or even having the most basic personal details on it.

They even have that covered. PayPal, a subsidiary of eBay, is an ultra-secure site you can use to buy and sell on eBay and elsewhere.

That is, if you need a broken pen, some snow or fancy being invisible for a while!