Stamped: July 19th, 2007 | Related Posts
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I love ebay, you can pretty much find everything you want thanks to this portal, and at the best price.
No wonder it was the fastest growing growing company in the history of U.S. business.
Everyone can sell and buy everything they want on that auction website. The supply creates demand and weird stuff to be sold online are flourishing.

But before focusing on that topic, let’s have a bit of history.

Few of us know that eBay has a bit of French touch.
Pierre Omidyar is the founder of eBay. He was born in Paris in 1967, the only child in a French-Iranian family. At the age of six, the family emigrated to the United States and he grew up in and around Washington.

He started “auctionweb” in 1995, later on, the site went for a change of name. As the domain name “echobay” was already taken, he went for the now infamous “ebay”.

In 2005, the company claimed more than 100 million registered users. Those said users can sell whatever they please and some weird auctions could be seen now and then on the portal.

For instance:

“Young man’s virginity, Please Look.”

“Fully functional kidney for donation.” (eBay soon came out with a rule against selling body parts).

One of the most famous ebay story being Andrew Fischer’s Forehead ad auction that hit $30,000 (100 bids). The winning bidder could have a non-permanent logo or brand name tattooed on his head for 30 days.

You can also find Justin Timberlake’s French toast breakfast, Britney Spears’ hair, a gumdrop sucked and discarded by Arnold Schwarzenegger sold on ebay.

Even celebrities put their personal items on sale on ebay. I remember “The Gathering” selling old guitars and other goodies.

ebay’s phenomenon is also profitable to charities. Companies like Kompolt or AuctionCause provide a “comprehensive auction management service focused on creating successful high-value, high-profile promotional auctions for charities, Nonprofit organizations and top brand companies”.

Kompolt’s latest event was the auction of front row seats for Gwen Stefani’s Sweet Escape tour. All the benefit going to a Child foundation.

AuctionCause has organized an eBay charity auction event in which winning bidders can talk to celebrities for 10 minutes via eBay’s newly acquired Skype service.

So far, the most expensive object sold on ebay so is a Yatch.

On February 08 2006 eBay closed an auction for a 50% deposit on a yacht. The deposit sold at the ‘buy it now’ price of $85,000,000.00, the total cost being $168,000,000.00 USD.
The yacht was bought by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich and is expected to be delivered in 2007.

This sale far eclipses the old record of the most expensive item sold on eBay when on August 16, 2001 a Gulfstream II jet was sold to an African charter airline company for $4,900,000.00 USD.

I’m just wondering how much people would be willing to pay if I were to put that “egocentric” blog on sale?

Anyone?