It’s eBay’s 20th anniversary. Celebrate two decades of strategic bids, overstuffed watch lists and nail biting countdowns with these little-known facts about everyone’s favorite online auction site.
1. eBay’s original name was AuctionWeb and it looked much more like Craigslist than the site we know as eBay today.
2. A man once sold his “life” on the site for $309, 292.
3. eBay sees more than 2 billion transactions per day. Per. Day.
4. Though eBay is synonymous with auctions, the majority of items purchased there today are via “New/Buy It Now.” In fact more than 70 percent of sales on the site are via this option.
5. In 2002, the privately owned town of Bridgeville, California, was sold on eBay for $700,000. Apparently the highest bidder decided owning a town just wasn’t for them, and put it back up for auction on the site, eventually earning $1.25 million in 2006.
6. The most expensive item ever sold on eBay was a $168 million, 405-foot yacht, purchased in 2006 by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. (No word on whether or not he was coming off an auction loss for Bridgeville, California, that same year.)
7. According to the site, “most people surf the Internet in the evenings when they get home from the office, so closing times between 6-8 p.m. PST (9-11 p.m. EST) seem to be ideal times for auctions with consumer goods.”
8. A new species of sea urchin was discovered on eBay in 2004 (with a similar reoccurrence in 2008). In both cases, someone listed the items (the sea urchin and an insect of a previously unknown species encased in amber some 40-50 million years ago) on eBay for sale. In the latter case, the British scientist who bought it, Richard Harrington, attempted to name the insect after the site, Mindarus ebayici, but ultimately this was rejected and it was named Mindarus harringtoni.
9. One of the first items ever sold on eBay shortly after its launch was a broken laser pointer. When eBay creator, Pierre Omidyar, emailed the person who bought the broken laser pointer for $14.83 to make sure he knew it was broken, the man told him, “I’m a collector of broken laser pointers.”
10. Singer James Blunt once sold his sister on eBay. The “You’re Beautiful” singer told UK’s The Guardian, “She basically had a funeral to go to in Ireland and the planes were on strike and the ferries were out of season. So I put on eBay: ‘Damsel in distress needs knight in shining armour to get her to this funeral on Saturday. What can anyone do?’ And these men bid and bid and bid and the winning guy said: ‘I can do this, I’ve got a helicopter.'” The craziest part? His sister went on the marry the man! And they’ve named both of their children after helicopters. What a sweet deal!
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