One company, Henley Health Care, even considered auctioning a pain relief skin patch it developed, before deciding getting cold feet. But eBay did auction off a human, or at least a breakfast with one. The proceeds went charity. Virtual garage sales eBay and its cousins are part of the worldwide electronic commerce market, whose potential for riches has industry analysts spewing out numbers so large, they are unfathomable. Sears shut down its mail order operation in 1993, but the shopping catalog as an institution remains more robust than ever, with electronic counterparts like the L.L.Bean , Land's End , and Patagonia catalogs, putting these offerings on the web.
Flea markets are like vast garage sales, attracting buyers and sellers from all over the region.
In both its large and small incarnations, these gatherings inevitably feature bargaining, which sometimes can be as heated as a mid-eastern bazaar. And there certainly is an audience. Last December, Media Matrix , a firm that tracks web usage, ranked eBay as the second most popular site on the Internet when measured by total minutes per month. Today, there are so many online auctions that meta-sites are now tracking the activity. Like the flea market owner, many of these sites act not as a seller, but as an agent-a neutral trading venue in which buyers and sellers can come together.