The official history of E-bay suggests that the website was first invented by Pierre Omidyar in California on Sept 3rd 1995 and that the first item that was sold was a broken laser pointer.
The official history is in fact a bunch of lies, it's what they want you to believe as what really happened is contoversial, embarrasses royalty and shakes many religious beliefs to the very core.
In 1864 Pierre Nasique (as he was then known) founded a trading enterprise based on telegram bidding that was advertised in the elite newspaper periodicals of the day - The New York Times, Germany's 'Die Zeitgeist Schnell', Paris's 'Nouveu Newswique' and the Wolverhampton Express & Star. Those who could afford to would have their manservant place adverts with a 2-3 week time limit & invite others to send telegrams. The highest bidder would win.
He named this enterprise 'e'bay as, being French, he couldn't be bothered to come up with a more meaningful name.
Although originally a playground of the rich & famous the trading enterprise proved a moderate success but an early scandal erupted as telegrams were'nt always confidential and an insider trading scam allowed The Duchess of Sardinia to beat Lord Scavenwerthy of Slough to take
ownership of a rare jeweled replica of a North American Wildebeest by outbidding him by 2 pfennigs.
Nasque found his adverts stopped making profit and so he extended the business to allow bids to be entered by mail or by carrier pigeon.
His business exploded at this point and became increasingly popular with those selling low value items. One infamous early entrepreneur known only as Adolf began using e'bay in the late 19th Century to sell his low grade art-work from Vienna. Unfortunately his subject matter of world conquest failed to find enough buyers and he was ultimately forced to sell one of his own testicles to afford a train ticket to Munich. Little is known of what happened to him after this but even today listing items on E-bay that don't sell is colloquially known as 'doing a Hitler'.
As time went on e'bay was used more and more by royalty. One of the most famous instances occured in 1917 when Tsar Nicholas, desperate to raise capital to keep funding his nations involvement in WWI sold his daughter Anastasia to an un-named buyer in the far east. We don't know how much the young girl was sold for but she later resurfaced into public life and would go on to marry a Beatle under her new name Yoko Ono.
In 1924 Pierre Nastique had to leave his company as a scandal was uncovered. Over the years he had been keeping all of the best sale items to himself and deliberately listing them with spelling mistakes to prevent others from bidding. On January 16th 1924 nobody paid mush attention when Pierre bought '1 mip derailing the locomation of the funhouse of strewth' but shopping historians believe that this was in fact a map depicting the location of the fountain of youth'. 6 months later Pierre who was now looking like a spritely young 18 year old left the company following an argument over deliberately leaving nagative feedback to the seller who had called Nasique a 'petty criminal' and a 'monkey-boy'.
Once Nasique had left the company fell on hard times and would remain almost forgotton until 1995 when a youthful looking man named Pierre Omidar launched a new version on the fledgling internet.
Omidar has always refused to comment on the uncanny likeness he bears to Nasique.
Even in this new era of E-bay there have been royal scandals that have often been hushed up. As we now know in 1998 Prince Phillip, perturbed at having to share meal times with a droning old crone, sold the Queen Mother for £58 pounds. Rumour has it he was upset with the haul stating that 'if he'd wanted a few more pictures of his wife he would've just dusted off the blasted polaroid camera'.
The Queen Mother was, of course, bought by Madame Tussauds of London who displayed her in pride of place until she withered and died under the lights 9 days after purchase. They tried to send her back for a full refund but as they had failed to follow the strict feeding guidelines that the palace had sent with the Queen Mum they failed.
Tussauds were to have the last laugh, however, as they were swiftly commisioned to provide a wax model of the Queen Mother so the general public would be unaware of the tragedy that had taken place. The ruse would remain undiscovered for years and was only revealed when the waxy trail left behind on a tour of China was analysed and proven without a doubt to 'not be old woman wee'.
Today, many millions of people trade every day on e-bay unaware of the dark secrets held in it's past.
For more info on E-bay look out for my as yet unpublished expose entitled 'E-bay: Friend or Fish?'.
This review is copyright Pert Abacus although some of the words have appeared on other sites. Most notably 'a', 'the' and 'testicle'
The complete review also appears on Dooyoo.co.uk under the name Pert_abacus
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Very good! You have shattered my beliefs, I thought E'bay was the Fifth Musketeer........or a small island off the coast of Corsica....
I bet a few members rate you off topic but that's up to them, I enjoyed the review!
Advantages: easy to use, you find unique products at very low prices Disadvantages: Must be good with bidding on your item you are interested, especially if the auction finishes late
Kirki 29.01.2002 ·
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of ebay.co.uk
Advantages: Fun, no commitment, useful for finding rareties or selling unwanted bits and pieces. Disadvantages: Trust plays a big part in the buyer/seller contract
blurbubble 22.10.2001 ·
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Review of ebay.co.uk
Advantages: cheap, quick, secure, the seller has reviews next to his name on previous sold items Disadvantages: Some people run scams, you don't get to see the product until it arrives.
Beeboystance 09.08.2000 ·
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Aug 15th, 2009
very helpful by (100%):
