eBay owned no inventory and shipped nothing, and in 1998 it was one of the few internet companies that turned a profit. Collectors traded toys, coins, and comics on the site. Ordinary people sold things from their attics to strangers who paid by mailed check. eBay ran the auctions and charged a fee for each listing and each sale. It went public in September 1998.

AuctionWeb and Feedback

Pierre Omidyar, a software engineer, launched the site as AuctionWeb in 1995 from his apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area. The bet was that people would trust each other to trade if they had a fair market and a way to rate one another. eBay's feedback system let buyers and sellers build reputations. Collectors made up the earliest community. Their enthusiasm drew in everyone else, and the site grew by word of mouth.

PayPal In, PayPal Out

eBay priced its offering at $18 a share in September 1998, and the stock nearly tripled on its first day. Under Meg Whitman, eBay grew into a global marketplace and a pillar of online commerce. It bought PayPal in 2002 and spun it off in 2015. Along the way it grew far beyond collectibles, into new and used goods of every kind. eBay remains a public company today, trading on the Nasdaq as EBAY.

Cover: The Auction House: The Auctioneer, Charles Maurand. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for an auctioneer (the auction).