X admits that she was racing home to check the mail on her lunch hour until it occurred to her to have the packages delivered at work. During her peak dependence on eBay, X became such a slave to the site that she monitored auctions from her computer terminal at work throughout the day. And if the TV in the background happened to be tuned to Antiques Roadshow , PBS' flea market appraisal program, so much the better. A weird wedding of the Internet, home shopping networks, gambling and CB radio, eBay first raised its electronic gavel in 1995 as a nonprofit site for collectors of Pez candy dispensers to swap their wares in cyberspace. The rest is Wall Street history, and at any given time the site lists nearly two million items in 1,600 categories.
Sellers post pictures and descriptions of merchandise they're trying to unload.
They can run sales for three, five, seven or 10 days. Buyers try to outbid each other, and rather than having to sit at their computer all day, they can plug in an automatic maximum bid. At that point, you'll be notified by e-mail that you've been outbid and will have the opportunity to plug in a higher proxy bid. And, in theory at least, everyone goes home happy. Truth be told, a lot of people around the Valley are sitting in front of their glowing eBay screens wondering where it's all headed.