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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;verybrad, post: 11411423, member: 37&quot;]I don&#039;t think ebay had too much impact in the early days.&nbsp; The adoption just wasn&#039;t all that great.&nbsp; I remember the occasional shop that had an ebay listings section where items were not available except on-line.&nbsp; That mostly annoyed the buyers who were in the store. </p><p><br /></p><p>I closed my stand-alone store in 1991 and was not using ebay at the time.&nbsp; I got into it not all that long afterward. I had just bought a computer, having been on Web-TV prior.&nbsp; I bought it used on ebay.&nbsp; Was able to make purchases with the Web-TV but posting items for sale was pretty difficult. I know I paid over $600 for my first digital camera, so the start-up cost for doing ebay properly was pretty high.</p><p><br /></p><p>Once ebay really got going, we began to see the price of common items plummet.&nbsp; I remember that Fisher Price toys and depression glass, to name a couple things in particular, really took a dive. On the other hand, ebay gave access to some pretty incredible items at reasonable prices.&nbsp; There wasn&#039;t much in the way of reliable price guides for many things.&nbsp; A lot of sellers were just throwing items up at auction and seeing where they would land. Timing was everything and some items really just didn&#039;t do as well as they might have.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>It was a good time for bargain hunting, but you also had to beware.&nbsp; Sellers were not very good at descriptions and photography was often bad.&nbsp; I think about 20% of my purchases had undisclosed flaws.&nbsp; Sometimes I was able to get an adjustment or make a return, but I often just took the loss.&nbsp; It usually meant that I just couldn&#039;t make as much off the item as I had anticipated. I was buying a lot.</p><p><br /></p><p>I was also selling a lot.&nbsp; At the height of my involvement with ebay, I was doing about $3500 a month.&nbsp; Quite often, I would buy something on ebay and turn around and resell it on ebay for profit.&nbsp; knowing what you have, writing good descriptions, taking good photos, and having a good seller rating was the key to success. This was in the mid 90s and lasted past the turn of the century.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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