Blast from the Past: eBay Auctions in September 1999

by: COVID-19

1.5 billion listings on eBay today?  And what percentage of that is actually generic junk / counterfeits / bootlegs?  You know, the same mass produced throwaways that anyone can find on Amazon?  Today's eBay is a joke compared to 20 years ago.

by: lessthanthreerecords

"Feel free to share your early memories of the site."

It worked.

by: Carl

Remember The Main Page from 1999
https://web.archive.org/web/19991005000741/http://ebay.co.uk/<
BR>
Shows How Much It Has Grown: CDs
https://web.archive.org/web/19991012180425/http://local-listing
s.uk.ebay.com/aw/listings/list/category1049/index.html

Remember when they used to put 10 Years Of Announcements on 1 page!
2007 - 2017
https://web.archive.org/web/20170702181823/www2.ebay.com/aw/ma
rketing-uk.shtml

How things have changed :(

by: Bill

eBay up until about 2010 eBay worked very well and we all made a lot of money. Now it is crap!!!

by: shut1968

Buy it now destroyed the sale of collectibles on the site period.. when there were auctions only was when the money was made period. Now you got idiots hitting up thrift stores and yard sales buying stuff for a few bucks excited to flip it for double or triple their money when they could have auctioned it off for far more.

by: Rexford

Listings weren't hidden, search worked, I made a lot of money, and eBay appeared to love, appreciate and embrace their sellers back then. Now it is one lashing after another, sporadic sales at best, capped sales, and never ending busy work. (i.e., the never ending item specifics updates). You can list an item on Poshmark in a little over a minute.  Listing on eBay these days is like writing War and Peace.

by: The End

I have a screen print out from 1999 of the item I won, now worth twice what I paid.
The page was very eye appealing, simple, fun-looking, easy to navigate, and you could Quickly : See the item description, contact the seller, see the price and  place a bid. ANY method of payment was accepted.
The Original "ebay" logo gave it that "C'mon in and have fun !" appearance.

Today's page looks anal retentive, cold and uninviting. Ads from others don't belong on the page. There is no choice of payment method.
And the cost to engage with Ebay is repulsive.

by: Snapped

Here’s an interesting thought exercise to engage in during the copious free time you as a seller now have while waiting (too often now fruitlessly) for one of your listings to be seen, much less actually sell (‘defect’ free). Take your time - there’ll be even more now as you wait to get paid for it...

Try to name one thing - just one - that has been ‘improved’ or enhanced over the past two decades that makes it even more enticing to successfully sell on that ‘venue.

by: Michael in BC

When I joined in December '96, there were just over 2,000 registered sellers.  The 1st thing I sold (a royalty medallion that I couldn't sell at all locally), went for $25.  I panicked thinking someone made a mistake - it couldn't be worth that much !   For the 1st couple of years, I didn't even own a scanner, as there was no requirement to show images.   Until around 2002, my sell-through rate was 100% - every single thing sold, and it was in the mid to high 90s % range for years after that.  Auctions were great - I even took personal checks from England - no problems !  10c to list, then 5% on the first $25, then 3% on anything above that.  That was it - no payment processing fees, no defects, free T-shirts, and everything worked well

Any sense of "community" is long gone - now we work for a massive corporation whose idea of customer service is outsourced folks in distant lands who read nonsense off screens and tell us someone will call us back within 24-48 hours.

Yes, I still list a few things from time to time, but my days as a gold powerseller are a distant memory..

by: ebayout

All I remember are the 5% selling fee and shipping a 2 lb. box for a flat rate of $3.95 to all 50 states.  

by: RKTOYS

I started sometime in 1998, when the old Usenet alt.toys.transformers.marketplace was on hiatus.  Back then, you could go through all 200-300 TransFormers listings in about 10 minutes (dialup was slow).  Though I was mostly a toy collector, I often bought exotic computer components and software as well.  Selling was a breeze.  You never really worried about the 25c listing fee because almost everything sold the first time around and the first relist was free if it didn't.  I would think nothing of buying from Canada, Japan, western Europe, or Australia.  Some of the most interesting stuff in my collection came from outside of the country.  eBay was the best thing ever.

They've just kept chipping away at it though.  By the time I started selling in 2012, it was too late.  Too many rules and fees and taxes and bugs and fraudsters to really build anything.  I really tried but nothing worked for long and everything worsened with each passing year.  I rarely buy for the same reasons it's so hard to sell.  Mangled payments is the end of the road.  It's just not worth it for ~$50 a month.  Once conventions open back up next summer, I won't miss it.

by: toolguy

Buying on eBay was so much fun in 2000

I would send a check (4-5 days)

Seller would wait for check to clear (10-15 days)

Seller would ship whenever they felt like it.

30 days after I bought the item it arrived. . . . .

As for being a seller back then, I was in 100% control, I could rip off any buyer I wanted to with little or no repercussions (besides a pesky negative). . . .

Oh yea, those were the days! LOL

by: The End

Never had a problem.
Always smooth transactions.
Always.

by: The End

toolguy = Donahoe

by: The End

Strange how toolguy only shows up when we recall the Greats Days of Ebay only to trash us.
He's not a component of a Healthy Ebay.

by: toolguy

@The End

I became a eBay member Jan 1998

I became a IPO stock holder in Oct. 1998

I became a full time seller in June 2000

One thing for sure is I was there and I'm still here. . . . I know the TRUTH

by: toolguy

@ebayout

I remember gasoline at .79 a gallon

Prices on everything have gone up, including eBay fee's and postage.

The world changes daily. . . . . .

by: aris 2

Yeah, I was there in Sep 1999.
Most people preferred the 99 cent starting price because the listing fee jumped (if my memory serves me well...which it doesn't anymore) a good $1.25 maybe even more if your starting price was over a dollar.
On twenty items, that was a good $25 higher.

It was a different animal then - much more civil. No sniping and the like and starting at 99 cents (for me anyway, selling vinyl records) was very lucrative. Some of my items would sell well over $100 each. Final value fee, of course, was much lower too.

I also remember the very first night of 'buy it now's'. Starting right at 3am (midnight on the West Coast) I tried to put about 10 items up and it wouldn't work at all.
Took them a couple hours to get it straightened out - much better than today when glitchy stuff NEVER gets fixed.

A few days ago I laughed at the memory about how Ebay also used to shut down at midnight every Thursday night for 6 hours for 'maintenance'. Just try and imagine that today.

by: Whatever

and so concludes tonight's episode of "tripping Down Memory Lane" nighty night

There's no do overs.

by: Snapped

“ I remember gasoline at .79 a gallon...”

Which adjusted for inflation from around 1978 when that was true is over $2.50 in 2020.

I used to tell folks seeking to consign gold items and concerned about ‘timing’ that an oz of it in the late 19th century was around $15. Which would buy you a good horse and a nice steak dinner at a 5-star restaurant. Fast forward 125 years or so, and it’s ‘worth’ about 100 times more now. Which will buy you a good horse and a nice steak dinner....Unless they’re charging too much (over value) for the horse, of course. Maybe you get the idea there.

Yes, everything ‘changes’. Everything ‘evolves’. But when the basis of that change is rotten instead of nourishing, especially when contrived vice natural, (eBay being a man made contrivance that too often defies natural reason and of late, way outpaces inflation) that change usually leads to extinction, or starvation, or at minimum, stagnation.

Perhaps your memories of past blasts also recalls ‘new’ Coke? How’d that particular contrived ‘change’ work out?

You know the truth? You can’t handle the truth.