posted on July 13, 2001 08:57:18 AM
Dot-Com Mania's Back: For Souvenirs Of Carnage
Collectors Snap Up Mementos Of Internet Flameouts
TORONTO, 10:45 a.m. EDT July 13, 2001 -- Dot-com mania is striking again -- but this time it is being fuelled by memento-hunting collectors sifting through the ashes of the Internet flameout.
Stock certificates in dead or dying companies, delivery bags and even signs from receiving bays are all up for grabs as collectors snap up a piece of the tragicomic history of the dot-com boom and bust.
Shares in Webvan Group Inc., the e-grocer that lost $829 million US before closing down this week, are trading for just three tenths of a cent on the Nasdaq Stock Market's over-the-counter bulletin board. But on eBay, the online auction site, collectors are bidding as much as $31 for just one of Webvan's stock certificates.
"People are fascinated by this appearance of success, which all of a sudden came cratering down," said Bob Kerstein, owner of Scripophily.com, a Web site that sells stock certificates in Webvan and other dead dot-coms among its inventory of collectible share issues.
Rick Broadhead, an Internet author and dot-com collector, said such items are a valuable catalogue of a madcap era. "One day, there's going to be a dot-com museum."
Among Broadhead's mementos is a stock certificate from eToys Inc., the defunct online toy retailer. He said that not only is the elaborately designed document eye-catching, it is also a vivid illustration of the spendthrift attitude of the dot-com world. And the no-cost-too-high mindset of the late 1990s has staged a comeback.
Broadhead paid $149 for his eToys certificate, while actual shares in the company -- which is operating under bankruptcy protection -- trade for just under a cent.
On eBay, a simple insulated vinyl delivery bag from Kozmo.com, whose delivery business closed in April, sold for $76. Even a simple fridge magnet from Kozmo fetched $14.50. And one bidder paid $1,075 for one of the scooters used in the delivery operations of the site, whose slogan was We'll Be Right Over.
Diane Pacom, a University of Ottawa sociology professor who specializes in popular culture and trends, said collectors will pay premium prices to have a souvenir of an era when "uneducated 17-year-olds were making millions of dollars" and the Internet came of age.
"It's like a romantic love affair. It wasn't meant to last."
And she said the fact that the dot-com boom ended in a "messy fashion" simply adds to memento mania, much like the sinking of Titanic has created a century-old mystique around the ill-fated luxury liner.
