Back somewhere in late 1990s I happened upon eBay as a platform. I wasn't doing anything business-wise at the time. I had just heard that it was a good place for finding used vintage parts for motorcycles and old scooters. I was deep into the trend of restoring old Italian scooters, but I didn't want to pay full retail price for replacement parts and consumables. So, I started fishing around.
Browser? What's a Browser?
The Internet at that time was extremely new still. We had just graduated as consumers from DOS-like connections and bulletin boards to actual browsers beyond AOL gateways. While the world had evolved quite a bit with better browsers and far better HTML coding, this was still in the days before CSS and well before anything really usable in terms of JavaScript. Anything that actually ran a program on a web page was actually run with Java or C++ instead. And it wasn't until year's later that eBay had developed a client app for users to mass-load items onto their platform. That said, eBay was generally fairly usable, had a low learning curve, and you could get functional very quick. And then things really took off when they connected with PayPal as an online payment processor. A new user for a small business literally had everything they needed at that point to be viable and reach markets both domestic and international.
Doing What You Love
Soon enough, my hobby turned into a second income. I was constantly scouring newspaper ads and posts for barn finds to add to my collection. I had a separate garage for all my scooter stuff, and ultimately it ended up being my warehouse for a lot of what I moved.
What I didn't need or use right away went into the selling box and off to eBay. I met hundreds of people online, made lots of friendships long since gone now, and talked with folks from all over the world too. It was a weird golden age of the early Internet. I also found a lot of weird stuff. Here's one, a vintage Japanese Fuji scooter. I only had this barn find for a few months before I flipped it though. Parts were extremely hard to find to get it to work, but it was mostly there for someone dedicated enough.
Technology Integration was a Pain
Taking photos was difficult though. Again, a lot of technology we take for granted now wasn't widespread. I didn't just have a mobile to snap a bunch of photos with and then move them to a computer. Instead, I started off with a film camera, processed the shots, scanned them with a flatbed, and then sold things online. Soon enough, I found a used digital camera, my first digital Canon D10, and I was able to speed up the process of photo to web page posting.
Hitting a Stride
Within a few years, by about 2005, my eBay market was really humming at its high point. Parts were moving left and right, and the inventory availability in the U.S. was tight. There was enough opportunity that businesses in VietNam and China were kicking in to sell aftermarket replacements new on eBay, creating new competition against the old, original parts. That got so hot, they even go to the point of selling entire Lambrettas and Vespas. However, their market fell out when the first few customers got hoodwinked with bodgy parts that had a lot of nice-looking paint to cover up all the bondo work and Swiss-cheese metal underneath.
The online part business was getting so diversified, I was even playing with the idea of getting into Yamaha YSRs and had one started, but then we had kids, and everything changed.
Looking Back Now
It's been some 20 years since then. I still sell things online for second income, but now it's all digital. Writing, content, web coding, NFTs, liquidity pool positions and similar make up most of my day now. The Internet itself has made so much possible in the last two or three decades, and whole industries exist now that we never imagined back then. Blockchain added a whole new layer beyond anything we expected as small businesses back then. That said, I still have my eBay account, and still use it as my digital garage sale platform here and there.
All images are my own under copyright.
