WHY look for second best?.......Among the consumer-to-consumer business models, eBayTM Inc.
offers a populist paradigm. This service was launched by Pierre
Omidyar and his girlfriend (now his fiancée) on Labor Day 1995. She
is an avid collector of PezTM and had envisioned the possibility of
collecting PezTM dispensers and interacting with other collectors over
the Internet. eBay was started to provide people with a central
location to buy and sell unique items and to meet other people with
similar interests.
A community now encompassing many collectors, eBay introduced
person-to-person online trading, developing an efficient and
entertaining trading site on the Web that is available 24 hours a day,
seven days a week. Currently, there are more than 2.0 million
registered users and more than 1.5 million items listed for sale; in
excess of 200,000 items are added daily. Individuals—not big
businesses—use eBay to buy and sell items in more than 1,000
categories, including collectibles, antiques, sports memorabilia,
computers, toys, Beanie Babies, dolls, figures, coins, stamps, books,
magazines, music, pottery, glass, photography, electronics, jewelry and
gemstones—"everything from chintz china to chairs, teddy bears to
trains, and furniture to figurines."
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