Pack rats have a new home on e-bay
By Staff
Leada Gore, Editor
There's a dirty little secret around the Gore household. It shows up every few weeks in the form of a cardboard box left on our front porch.
The boxes are generally small and all have one thing in common: they are items purchased from e-bay.
Every night, Greg goes into his study, turns on his computer and looks at e-bay. He doesn't really have to be looking for anything in particular and most times, he doesn't purchase anything. He just likes to click around, see what they have to offer and then tell me about what he found. I guess it's sort of the cyber-space version of window shopping.
For those of you who don't know, e-bay is sort of an on-line yard sale. People advertise items and you bid on the things you want. If, after a certain period of time, you're the high bidder, you win the item. You then pay for it and it's shipped to you.
Then, almost magically except for the payment part, it winds up on your front porch in a small cardboard box that your wife trips over when she's trying to juggle her purse, laptop and keys to get into the house. Not that this has happened to me, of course.
Several years ago, a computer expert said e-bay would make yard sales, swap meets and flea markets obsolete. While that hasn't happened yet, e-bay has become a place to find about anything you want.
There's always a piece of toast (or a potato chip or knot on a piece of wood) that looks like a famous person. There's tons of clothes, shoes, purses, sunglasses and just about anything else you would put on your body. There's also electronics, old yearbooks and, just in case you're interested, a collection of four George Wallace presidential bumper stickers. As of presstime, those could be yours for just $4.99 plus shipping and handling, of course.
Greg has been so caught up in the e-bay trend that he decided to become a seller as well as a purchaser. He had found an NFL trivia game buried among some items at his old house. He was convinced this rare antique would fetch a pretty penny once it hit cyberspace.
He went online and, just before he posted his item, he found two more trivia games just like his were already available.
"They were selling for about $3, plus about $5 shipping and handling," he said.
"So what did you do?" I asked.
"I juts kept it. We can always sell it at the next garage sale."
Maybe so. Or maybe, just maybe, we can come across a piece of toast that looks like George Wallace and really hit it big on e-bay.
