posted on October 17, 2001 10:48:53 PM new
eBay only had about a million or so listings and everything sold for more that you could buy it for anywhere else.
eBay listing fees were 20%+ less.
eBay didn't have the watch feature so people actually placed a bid instead of marking it as watched only to email you later asking if they can buy it direct. Great Idea ebay you get to charge us for more listing fees but less closing costs.
PayPal was free and you could even make money when people signed up under you.
Yahoo was actually somewhat a contender with eBay.
When you didn't have to sell diet pills of knives for .01 with 9.99 shipping to make a buck
I know I'm missing some
eBay fees are like being slowly pecked to death by chickens!!!
posted on October 18, 2001 07:17:29 AM new
eco 101 -supply and demand,this is how the market works,in oil and gas,cars & trucks,cotton,sugar,cocoa,silver,gold,platinum.
watch the trend,while bids are getting lower and lower,cost of selling is rising,so after all the dumping,how many sellers will still be around?
these days some brave sellers respond to poor sales by listing more,when this produces no results,they have to balance the listing fee for all the items versus the profit they make on those which have bids.
if this is zero or negative,these sellers will have to pull in their horns and stop listing for awhile,awhile could be a few days,weeks or months.
ebay is turning into a clearing ground for those who need cash fast
posted on October 18, 2001 07:38:34 AM new
And when you were:
- allowed to run your own business?
- allowed to communicate with your customers?
- allowed to enjoy yourself and make a few bucks without having to go to eBay school or memorize 5 volumes of rules
- allowed to pick and chose who you wanted to deal with?
- able to trust people?
posted on October 18, 2001 09:56:01 AM new
Do you mean back when buyers honored their bids right away....
and when sellers packed OVERLY well & shipped timely....
or when it was perfectly acceptable to send a personal check cause we were all "good people".....
or when "actual shipping" REALLY meant the ACTUAL amount without "shoe leather fees"....
or do you mean when you exchanged emails and feedback without begging or extortion....
or when searching catagories was FUN because there weren't 10 gazillion of them....
or maybe you are talking about when ebay was a venue instead of a money machine to justify to stockholders.....
or maybe the old days when something like AFA would have been planned & implimented by the sellers instead of by corporate PR departments.....
or the days when seeing your MY PAGE pull up made you feel good and you spent hours looking for things to spend money on.....
posted on October 18, 2001 10:42:09 AM new
those were the days of the ca goldrush when folks pan for good using thier hands and pans.those were the days when wildcatting is fun and adventuresome and decison of drill or no drill is up to the fortune tellers gazing into a crystal ball.
when cars were first invented,there were 400 car companies.
ditto for disk drive makers,pc ,scanners,radios and tvs.
when entry barrier is low,we are bound to find everyone and his brother doing it,pity those who paid 50 dollars an hour to have someone come to their house and show them how to sell on ebay.
posted on October 18, 2001 10:54:11 AM new
>all I ever had to worry about was getting a good grade on my government test.
>my big decision for the day was what purse to use with my shoes
>gas was 25cents a gallon (1970)
>my Dad raised a family of 6 kids on $12,000 a year
>the only "disease" I had to worry about getting was the chicken-pocs or the measles.
>things were less stressed and people actually took the time to say hello to one another.
>I thought 35 was middle age and 50 was old age.
posted on October 18, 2001 10:57:40 AM new
I remember the days of when you were on AOL or Compuserve, they were closed systems, so you could not contact those outside of those systems.
I remember the days of Compuserve where you paid $19.20 per hour to gain access to their information forums. This was before CNN.com and ABCNEWS.com - I paid by the minute to read online news.
I remember the day when I spent $800 on a scanner that would sell for $30 now.
I remember the days of paying $1600 for a 486 16 mhz computer with 4 megs of RAM. Last month I got a pentium 3 1.2 gig mhz with 128 megs of ram for $850
Things change. Sometimes things get more expensive. Sometimes less expensive.
posted on October 18, 2001 11:07:27 AM new
$2500 for a 286 System! and a 300 baud modem
bbs's for any modem 'connection'
And when people in the old message boards on ebay, would always come in and ask: What does the number mean next to my email address? (they only used email addys back then, I don't know when they changed it to the names that are used today)
posted on October 18, 2001 11:14:20 AM new
My first computer was a Timex Sinclair, circa 1980 - 2k of computing power. That is right, 2k - That means my current computer, which is not even top of the line, has 600,000 times the processing power. Then I upgraded to a Commodore Vic 20 and 64 with a tape drive, like a cassette instead of a floppy disk, and took 5 full minutes to load. I wouldn't go back to those days for anything!!!
posted on October 18, 2001 11:44:59 AM new
llama lady....THANKS LOADS!! If everything else going screwy in my life wasn't enough....now I find out that I am 10 years past middle age!!!!
Just because I remember life before VCR's, color TV, cable, microwaves, and those great NEW inventions of 8 track tape players, electronic calculators the size of a toaster, and getting 10 gallons of gas a pack of cigs AND change from a five doesnt mean I am ready for social security does it?????
Going to the back of my antique store and grab the old cane for $10 before somebody buys it out from under me!!!
posted on October 18, 2001 12:26:48 PM newthepackratsattic that was a remember when. I now believe that 55 is middle age and old age is somewhere between 70 and 80. I was brought up during the time period that anyone over 30 was not to be trusted.
[ edited by llama_lady on Oct 18, 2001 12:27 PM ]
posted on October 18, 2001 12:54:28 PM new
llama lady: ME TOO! That is why I was so concerned! I was trying to figure out where ALLLLLLLLLLLLLL those years went to when I wasn't looking! Do you find yourself suddenly not trusting anyone UNDER 30 now?
I think I get the most concerned when I see just about every album I still have from high school (late 60's/early 70's) being advertised on TV as "GoldenOldies"..........
Gotta send in that AARP memebership one of these days!
posted on October 18, 2001 01:09:30 PM new
I remember the jeans that fit so far down on my hips, I thought they would fall off. The flared legs, the skirts so short I had to hold a book behind me so you wouldn't see to my neck. I remember pouring beer in our coke cans so we could go on the beach and not get kicked off for drinking. I remember cutting class and going to Bear Cut on Key Biscayne and taking a case of Busch beer. I remember the real hippies, the real war protestors, the painted VW vans, when hamburg meat was 3 # for a $1.00., bread was 39 cents and a gallon of milk for 50 cents. I remember watching the news about Vietnam on a black and white television. Where a semester at a junior college for a full load was $100. (which back then was a lot of money). Where my dream car - a 1970 barracuda was $3400 and it might as well have been 34,000. Where my first car was a 1969 VW bug, I got it for $1900 and my car payments were $56 a month and I was afraid I couldn't afford it. Where my first job out of high school I got paid $1.29 an hour. I remember when I did the same job as the guy who sat next to me and he was paid $130 a week and I $65.00. ummm those were the days.
thepackratsattic. Thanks for the blast from the past.
posted on October 18, 2001 08:43:42 PM new
I paid over $600 for my first VCR .. and my parents thought I was nuts to spend money on such a thing.... They went on to open the oldest video rental store in our town.
An honest day's work for an honest day's pay.
You could come home from school, go outside and play, and your parents would not worry about you unless you weren't home by dark.
Our first computer ... an Apple for my hubby the commercial artist ... cost $11,000. The new one I just bought blows it away ... at a cost of $700.
You would get dressed up to go downtown and shop in a department store .... all of the windows would be painted by local school students for Halloween.
Kids who didn't get along in school settled things with their fists ... not knives and guns.
Big bell bottoms, hip huggers ... WAIT ... I just saw them in Teen Magazine.
Oh, yeah ... and Donny Osmond in Tiger Beat
BUT I certainly wish that I was around online for the beginning of eBay. It sounds like it was alot of fun!
I was brought up during the time period that anyone over 30 was not to be trusted.
