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In 1995 eBay, then named AuctionWeb, was born.
The first item ever sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer. It was 1995 and the seller was founder Pierre Omidyar. Two years later came the apex of the Beanie Babies boom, and eBay soon became the go-to destination for TY fanatics to get their hands on its highly collectable soft toys, which made up £378 million of sales at that year. That same year, sales hit the million mark as shoppers were spurred on by the dopamine rush of placing a winning bid.
In 1999, the site launched in the UK and its status as an online collectors’ market continued to grow thanks to landmark purchases including the oldest known pair Levi’s by Levi Strauss & Co. itself making fashion history in 2000. A first edition Superman comic became the most expensive comic ever sold on the site in 2014, at £2.4 million.
In many ways, eBay was at the vanguard of taking the the second hand shopping movement global. It allowed buyers from 190 countries to become sellers of pre-loved goods to anyone in the world, making hunting for vintage finds an art form and democratising shopping in the process.
One such expert eBayer is Robyn Donaldson, the woman behind the popular Instagram account Almost Everything Off eBay, who began her account as a way to showcase her thrifty home renovation. She remains an eBay fan after seventeen years using the site, citing some of her best finds as a 1950s style Smeg fridge won at £200 (the RRP is £1,599) and a pristine gold 1960s sofa.
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