Caught up with eBay

jumping ahead quite a bit. But this would be Meg Whitman's last year as president and CEO of eBay in two thousand seven. That same year, eBay purchased stub Hub. StubHub is an online ticket exchange company and provides a marketplace for buyers and sellers of tickets for various live events. The company started back in two thousand when to Stanford Business School graduates named Eric Baker and Jeff Fleurs an opportunity, and by two thousand five, StubHub was generating two hundred

million dollars in sales. Now, not everything was going smoothly for StubHub. In that time. Some people had used the service to sell counterfeit tickets others found that they were being penalized by major sports teams for getting a season ticket. They would go out and buy a season ticket to a sports team, then they would sell their regular season

seats on StubHub per game. So let's say I get a season ticket to the Braves, for example, and then on individual games, I'm selling my seats to anyone who goes through on StubHub, and I make a profit because individually, selling those seats over and over again, I make more

money than it cost for me to get the season tickets. Well, the New York Yankees suspended dozens of season ticket holders rights to attend playoff games after finding out they had been selling regular season seats and denied them the opportunity to renew their season tickets. So once people cut onto that, they said, well, you know, we went went, We're going to the playoffs, but you don't get to see it because you've been selling your seats to other people and

that's against our rules. Where we can make tons of money selling seats, but you sure as heck can't. Yeah, anyway, UM, I have different feelings about this, largely because it's very hard to go see a live theater show particularly at a notable venue like on Broadway, without paying crazy amounts of money for a ticket, Because you have people buying up seats and then reselling them out of markup price, and it's it's pretty infuriating at the same time seeing

people get punished for doing this. It's interesting, like it opens up a gray area, like where is it legal versus illegal? Anyway, I guess for season tickets there are specific their specific wording involved when you purchase those season passes, and that's what tells you that you're not supposed to

do this sort of thing. StubHub in the New England pay Trips got into legal battles over the rights to resell tickets, issues with voided tickets, claims of unfair trade practices, and more, and ultimately the courts decided against stub Hub. That wouldn't happen until two thousand nine, though, so that would be after eBay had already purchased them. eBay bought stub Hub for three hundred ten million dollars, a princely some in two thousand eight. We'd get another new president

for PayPal with Scott Thompson. Jeff Jordan had been president from two thousand four to two thousand and six and regive Doda from two thousand six to two thousand eight. Now remember PayPal was now part of eBay. Jordan's had gone on to lead Open Table, and Doddo would move into an executive vice president position with the parent company

of eBay. Thompson would serve as president of PayPal until two thousand twelve, when he would leave to become the CEO of a different company, one that has struggled famously over the last few years. Yahoo. In March two thousand eight, Meg Whitman stepped down as president and CEO of eBay and John Donahoe absumed that role. And when Whitman joined eBay,

it was a company of about thirty employees. By the time she left, eBay had grown into a global corporation with more than fifteen thousand employees valued at forty billion dollars. The company's growth had slowed quite a bit, but to be fair, it had such an explosive growth period when it was expanding into new markets it would have been unrealistic to expect that pace to continue at that particular rate. Whitman had led eBay into many new business ventures, and

she had opened operations throughout the world. One of her regrets, however, was her failure to establish eBay as an effective presence in Japan early on. According to Whitman, her opportunity to get into Japan coincided with the site's blackout crashes in that I talked about in an earlier episode. The company had to switch focus to fixing its infrastructure and improving reliability and lost the chance to get its foothold in Japan.

At that time, the company had established a Japanese site, but without proper support, the outlet didn't do very well, and ultimately Women chose to to close up shop in Japan.

It wouldn't be until two thousand nine when eBay would create some partnerships with local companies in Japan then managed to get back into that market, and it wasn't until February before eBay announced it would acquire a company called Geosis g I O s I S that conducted e commerce in Japan that would really get to try again. With Japan identified as the third fastest growing e commerce region in the world, it marked a pretty late start

for eBay to get into that region. Women had a bit of a mixed reputation among eBay users, the actual buyers and sellers on the site. For one thing, there was no denying the company had grown significantly under her leadership, but she also had made choices that at times upset the community. For example, at one point, she gave Disney its own auctions page, which many saw as preferential treatment

that put normal sellers at a disadvantage. They didn't get the platform that Disney had, and of course Disney is a multibillion dollar corporation, so it felt like they were being shoved aside. And plus, Whitman had actually worked for Disney in the past before she came to eBay, so there was that element as well. However, Whitman actually paid attention to reactions and she backed off of her decision. She reversed it, so it's not like she was saying

it's my way or the highway. She actually did listen to the community and she paid attention. After her departure, Meg Whitman ran for governor of California in the twenty ten gubernatorial race. She ran as a Republican and largely funded her own campaign out of her own money. Ultimately, she would lose to Jerry Brown, the Democrat. Ended it for a governor, and Whitman would go on to support

Mitt Romney during his bids for presidency. In the election, however, she famously supported Hillary Clinton rather than the Republican candidate Donald Trump. Starting in September twenty eleven, Whitman served as the CEO of Hewlett Packard. She did not get rave reviews, and Hewlett Packard didn't do so well in the following years, and Whitman shouldered a lot of that blame, perhaps unfairly. She would step down as CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprises

on February one, eighteen. John Donahoe was now the man in charge. So here's just a little bit more about him. He was born in Evison Evanston, Illinois. He worked at a beer distribution company out of high school before he became an associate consultant with a company called Bayne and Company. He started there in nineteen eighty two and worked his way up the chain, eventually becoming the CEO of the entire company in nineteen From there, he joined eBay as

the president of eBay market Places. During his tenure as the president and CEO of all of eBay, which lasted nearly seven and a half years, he more than doubled the revenues of the company to eighteen billion dollars, and he saw eBay's market value hit eighty billion. He would step down as president in but he joined the board of directors for PayPal as the chairman at that time. Now it's easy to forget this, but back in two thousand eight, the app store for the iPhone was brand new.

It was a new thing. It did not launch with the first iPhone. It was only available starting with the second generation iPhone, also known as the iPhone three G. eBay was one of just a handful of companies that had an application ready at launch, and in fact, it got featured a bit during Apple's unveiling. Also in two thousand eight, eBay made more acquisitions, including a company called bill Me Later and e commerce company uh. They made that act position for nearly one billion dollars. Bill Me

Later is a credit company. As the name would suggest, you get billed later on, and the way it works is that if you choose bill me Later as an option when you're checking out, the service asked you for your birth date and the last four digits of your Social Security number, and then it runs a quick credit check on you, and assuming the credit check is favorable, you are credited the money for the purchase, and then you pay back the service with interest. Of course, that's

how it makes money. However, eBay also at this time laid off about ten percent of its workforce, which equalled around one thousand, six hundred employees. The company focused most of the layoffs on the marketplace division, as that was the department that had slowed in growth the most to two single digit rates. It was still growing, but at

a very slow pace. eBay would hold another big round of layoffs in firing about two thousand, four hundred employees on that go around, which represented about seven percent of its workforce at the time. So you see how big the company grew in the meantime. If ten percent is sixteen hundred back at this point and then in two thousand, four hundred is only seven, I mean, that's that's that shows you the company did grow even after this this

round of layoffs. Regarding the two thousand eight layoffs, Donajo said it was necessary to quote improve our operations and strengthen our ability to continue investing in growth end quote. So in other words, he wanted to make sure that the company was focusing on the areas that were developing the fastest and to stop pouring resources into areas that had really plateaued. One last thing about two thousand eight.

In November of two eight, a seller named Jack Sheng became the first seller on eBay to get a feedback score of one million. You remember that Pierre Omidier had created this feedback ability where you could give someone a positive or negative one in feedback. So Jack Shang had received at least one million plus one votes. Uh, maybe more than that, because if some people had given negative feedback then that would have taken away from the total.

So once he hit one million, eBay honored him by naming a conference room after him over at eBay headquarters. Now I've gotta more to say about eBay, but before I get into it, let's take a quick break to

thank our sponsor. eBay launched a program in two thousand nine inside the company called the Women's Initiative Network or WIN, which provides opportunities and career development training for women interested in building a career in any department within the company, which I think is pretty cool and in fact, one thing I have to say about eBay is whether or not you like the site or the service, whether or not you've ever done an auction, there are shop there.

The company itself has a reputation for promoting fairness in its UH and its corporation among its employees. So everything from giving special opportunities for people to pursue training career development, making certain that people are not being treated unfairly due to ethnicity or gender, or sexuality or any of those things. It's really interesting and really admirable. So whether or not you like the company, at least the policies that the company has put in place, I think have been really

progressive and I like that a lot. Two thousand nine was also the year eBay sold the majority of Skype to a group of private investors. I mentioned this in the previous episode and how initially it looked like eBay was going to take a huge loss on the purchase and failed integration of Skype. However, Microsoft's bid a little bit later to buy up Skype for more than eight

billion dollars would end up offsetting that. Ex events, they ended up making enough money on the UH the amount of Skype they may they retained because they only sold a majority of their steak in two thousand nine, they kept about thirty five percent, and when Microsoft bought up all of it later for eight billion dollars, they sold it off in and it turned out that the difference more than paid off for their initial purchase of Skype, even after you factor in things like the debt that

needed to be paid off and and taxes and things like that. In two thousand ten, eBay got hit with a patent infringement lawsuit from a company called XPRT Ventures ll C. This story let me down a real rabbit hole and research, because I saw plenty of news reports from two thousand ten about the lawsuit being filed, but not nothing really substantial about how it all shook out. And as it turns out, the reason for that part is that it's eight years later and the lawsuit is

still going on. So what is actually at the heart of this lawsuit. Well, xp RT Ventures, which as far as I can tell, is a company that has patents but doesn't actually do anything else, sued eBay for three point eight billion dollars in twenty ten. An alleged that the company was infringing upon several patents and had stolen

trade secrets. According to the complaint, the patent holders met with eBay in two thousand one and showed a law firm claiming to represent eBay the patent applications for some of the patents they had been filing for online payments. Then, the complaint alleges that eBay used that information later when eBay incorporated some PayPal functionality into its own e commerce

payment platform several years later. Now the plot thickens. The actual patents were rejected multiple times during this application process. The final patent was accepted in two thousand nine. The website tech Dirt pointed out that the finalized patent, the one that actually would be protected from infringement, was different from the original filing, the one that eBay supposedly took

a look at and then later infringed. So, in other words, the the wording that was present in two thousand one uh that was that had changed by the time the patent was finally accepted, because it had been revised multiple times until accepted in two thousand nine. Other outlets outright

called xp RT a patent troll. A patentrol is a person or a company that files or buys patents with no intent to produce anything from them, but rather use them to threaten litigation against others in order to win court cases or more likely get a settlement out of court. You could also license patents to companies, and in fact, there are a lot of companies that do licensed patents

out to other people or other organizations. But there's a disturbing trend among certain groups to kind of hoard these patents and just wait for someone to do something that appears to violate them or to infringe upon them, and then they threaten legal action. And some companies, rather than going through the process of having to defend themselves in court, which is incredibly expensive and time consuming, will just end up coming to an agreement for an out of court settlement.

And that's how these companies make their money. They don't make it by producing something or building anything, or licensing and you know, ideas out to other people, or rather patents patents aren't really for ideas, it's it's the implementation of an idea. Instead, they wait for someone to do something that looks like it's an infringement and then they go after them and with the hope of an out of court settlement or maybe a court award if the

whole case goes to decision. The most recent information I could find about this involved eBay arguing that the patents in question contain unpatentable materials such as abstract ideas you cannot patent and abstract idea. That information all came to light back in the spring of at least that was where the documents I found were. That's when they were filed was in So this is still unfolding as I record this, and I have to admit I haven't read

all the legal proceedings. It would take me days to go through it all, or even the full two page complaint, because that was it was enormous. It could well be that XPRT has a valid argument here, So I don't want to give you guys the feeling that the whole thing is without merit. That might not be the case. There may be a real legit case behind xp rt

s allegations. I am amazed that this battle is stretched into twentyen though, because typically you would see either a settlement in this case, you would argue that, well, it's because eBay is fully confident that they did not do anything wrong and therefore they are defending themselves, um or you would see the accusers dropped the case because it would just get so expensive to continue. But neither of

those things have happened. Yet another legal issue that began to broil back in twenty ten would eventually scoop up eBay. It was a antitrust action from the United States Department of Justice, and later it would inspire a class action lawsuit brought against several companies in the tech space, including eBay, Lucasfilm, Apple,

and Google, among others. I think Intel was in there too, but the charge was that these companies were colluding with one another in an agreement to not conduct cold call recruitment efforts with each other's talent. So, in other words, these companies were not supposed to try and hire talent away from each other, which on the corporate level seems like it's all fair, right, You would say, oh, well, of course, it's not really fair for Intel to go after Google, or a Google to go after Apple, and

so on and so forth. But then if you look at it from the perspective of the employees, you would argue, wait a minute, this is denying people the opportunity to potentially improve their careers, to go and get a more competitive salary or a more fulfilling job somewhere, and that was in fact the basis of the argument both from the Department of Justice and the class action lawsuit. The Department of Justice suit was settled pretty much the day

it was filed. The class action lawsuit also went into settlement with various companies paying out to the sixty four thousand or so employees who were represented in the suit. UH, but it all depended upon individual UH companies and the percentages of that sixty four thousand because not all of them worked for the same company. Obviously. Also in eBay's app would launch on the iPad, that was a brand new product in and the company acquired Milo dot com

and that was a local shopping service. The service would let shoppers research products and compare prices to buy locally with real time availability information and so it kind of go through the inventory of various local stores and you could price do price comparison right there before heading out of your house to go and actually buy something. eBay bought Milo dot Com for reported seventy five million bucks, and that was just one of many acquisitions eBay made

during this period. And to go through every single one of them would be pretty bonkers. Also, a lot of them were, you know, like commerce sites or data and analysts sites, things that most of us don't have any connection to, and it wouldn't really be meaningful to go into it anyway. But I will hit some of the ones that are super important, because uh, I think we

need to at least acknowledge a few of them. But I'm just not going to do another episode on eBay right away, so we're not gonna go through every single one. So let's keep on trucking. Uh. We're up to two thousand eleven now, and I'm gonna go fairly fast from this point and just hit the big story points. In two thousand eleven, eBay continued its acquisitions, including the purchase of a majority stake in the online marketplace Giddy Giddy Your, which is based in Turkey and I only included it

because that name is awesome. Uh. Then in two thousand twelve, eBay launched PayPal Here, a system that would allow small businesses to accept PayPal as a payment option. Some analysts began to worry that eBay might be pushing PayPal to move beyond its scope of services to the detriment of its core business. David Marcus would become the president of PayPal in two thousand twelve, and then in two thousand thirteen, eBay would acquire Braintree, a company called Braintree for eight

million dollars. Braintree is a payment processing service that automates online payments, including stuff like recurring billing. I include it here because Braintree also was the parent company of Venmo. Venmo is a payment transfer service that lets you send money directly to another Venmo user, and it's an easy way to transfer money between average, everyday people right. It was created by some developers who saw the opportunity for a way that the average person could send somebody else

some money. Let's say that you go out for an evening with a friend of yours and you realize, oh, no, I left my wallet at home, and your friends says, we'll tell you what, I'll spot you tonight and you'll just owe me. Venmo was a way that you could very quickly send money from an account to your friends account, so that you could pay them back and not have that just sit over your head like an evil ax

over your friendship, threatening to follow at any moment. H So now PayPal would actually own Venmo, which actually makes me chuckle a bit, because I know some young folks who would turn their nose up at paypalty said, oh that's I would never use PayPal. I use Venmo, And they clearly did not realize the Venmo was owned by PayPal. I just find that amusing. But then I'm old and grouchy, so to pay that with a grain of salt. Also

in eBay launched a new venture called digital Storefronts. The store of friends were really interactive screens that showed various products, and customers could order them by going up to the screen and touching using gesture controls that would send information to the customer's mobile device, and then they could use PayPal on the mobile device to actually pay for the

thing and arrange for a delivery to their homes. Later on a post on the Forrester dot com blog, in stated that this experiment really failed to deliver additional value to the shopping experience, that it was trying too hard to change things. But they they said that there was an update to this strategy that was much more effective.

It was an integration in a Rebecca Minkoff store in Soho, in which the digital windows inside the store provided contextual information about the products that were there in the store, as well as help customers make purchasing decisions and link

them to customer loyalty programs. And they were interactive in a way where you were around the actual physical objects, and the author of the piece, whose name I don't know because I couldn't find it on the blog post, stated that rather than trying to overhaul the entire shopping experience, this tactic was aimed more at enhancing the experience and that was more effective. Well, we're in the home stretch.

We've got just a little bit more to say about eBay, but before I get into that, let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor. According to its official company timeline, in two thousand fourteen, eBay announced that it would spin off PayPal into a separate company. Now, this was something that Donahoe had initially resisted, as did the board of directors, but intense pressures in the market pretty much forced eBay's hand. So what was going on? Well, first, there was a

guy named Carl Icon. Carrl Icon is a billionaire businessman and an investor who has a large steak in lots of different company including eBay. He had more than forty six million shares in eBay. Icon pointed out that PayPal was the fastest growing division in all of the company of eBay, and he said it would be growing even faster if it weren't under the umbrella of another company. It deserved to be on its own in the market

where it could really grow. The board of directors of eBay initially rejected this proposal in January two fourteen, which kind of motivate Icon to start gathering support among shareholders to demand the action to create what is called a proxy battle, and that could have really set up an internal showdown in the company. It was getting pretty ugly. Well. September two fourteen is when eBay changed its tune and said that the two companies would in fact part ways

by mid now. Why did the company change its mind, Well, one was that wanted to avoid this proxy battle and it was coming up on a big annual meeting where such a such a battle could have been launched. But also the landscape had changed rapidly throughout the year with different competing services that we're all about payment processing supported by companies like Apple and Ali Baba were popping up

and cutting into PayPal space. It would be a lot easier for PayPal to flourish if it could be its own company and compete directly against these services, and eBay could benefit from using multiple services, not just PayPal, and so the companies kind of hugged it out and they went their separate ways. Icon by the way, with with PayPal, he swapped out his shares of eBay for an equal number of shares and PayPal, So that's kind of what he wanted all along. Dan Shulman would be named the

president and CEO of PayPal, the brand new company. In two thousand fifteen, Donahoe stepped down and Devin Winning would take on the role of CEO for eBay. Some people said, well, why would Donahoe step down? He had led the company so effectively, and you could argue that one reason is that up till two thousand fifteen, he was overseeing the enormous company that included eBay and PayPal. At two thousand fifteen, PayPal split off, so he would actually be heading up

a smaller company. It would actually be a step down for him from where he had been, and so maybe he had done everything he needed to accomplish, and that's why he decided to step down as CEO. Devin Winning would take over the role. He earned a b a. From Union College and a law degree from Columbia University. He had acted as CEO of a company called Nastech Pharmaceutical.

It was a company that his father had founded and led until his early passing and when it was still in his twenties when he took over that that company. He would go on to become an executive for Reuters before joining eBay as the president of the Global eBay market places back in two thousand eleven and today he also serves on the board of directors for General Motors.

He got elected to that in in September two thousand fifth teen, eBay celebrated its twenty years of being a thing, It's twentieth anniversary, and in twos sixteen, eBay acquired a company called The Expert Maker, which was a virtual reality technology company. So I guess we can look forward to shopping and virtual stores and malls using eBay as the foundation for various businesses. I'm not certain I need that experience,

as the online approach has worked fine for me. But who knows, maybe it will become the next way of shopping for stuff. Uh. eBay has also acquired an image recognition company called Corrigan, and it also bought an online ticket commerce site in Spain called ticket Miss, and there's been a recent curfuffle on eBay features meant to create incentives for people to buy stuff. Namely, there's this easy

low Price feature. The idea is that this feature will automatically lower the price of an item if no one has been on something like if you list an item for sale or forbidding and after a certain amount of time nothing has happened, it automatically lowers the price for you.

And some community members felt that this is unfair, it will actually hurt them in the long run, it will make themselves for stuff then less than what they were comfortable doing, and that it really only benefits eBay because eBay makes most of its money, or a great deal of its money through successful sales, So even if it's small successful sales, if there's a lot of them, that amounts up to a huge amount. I mean, that's what Pierre medi Aer saw when within the first year of

launching eBay, once he started putting in these fees. A report in the UK found that one in three UK consumers had mistakenly purchased a counterfeit electrical product online, so something that was being marketed as a recognizable brand but it turned out that it was a counterfeit uh and they purchased these on sites like eBay and also on Amazon, so eBay was not alone in this, And there is a growing amount of pressure from various consumer groups and

companies to convince Amazon and eBay and other sites like it to really crack down on counterfeiters. And that pretty much brings us up to date with what eBay has been up to. There's a car lots of other little things like features have been rolled out, but that gets so granular that I think it's not very interesting. Pierre Midi are, the founder of eBay, is still on the board of directors. He did recently sell off some of his shares in eBay. He spends a great deal of

his time doing philanthropic work these days. And before I go I thought I would list off some of the most expensive and some of the strangest things to sell on the auction site. And I grab these items from various sources, but a lot of them come from eBay itself. eBay has a timeline where they kept a record of some of the more expensive things that have been purchased on the site, and some other places had different things listed that We're not on eBay's official list, which makes

me wonder how how official and real they are. But we're gonna we're gonna take it all with a grain of salt. So here's a list of some of the more expensive things ah that have been sold or auctioned off on eBay. There was a baseball card featuring Honus hans Wagner, who played primarily for the Pittsburgh Pirates. His career stretched from eighteen seven to nineteen seventeen, so this is very early and professional baseball. The cards sold for

one point to seven million dollars. Yikes, yikes. In two thousand one, Rob Mitchell coughed up five hundred seventy seven thousand dollars for Black Betsy was a baseball bat. Has

a baseball bat that belonged to Shulis Joe Jackson. Shulis Joe Jackson, in case you aren't familiar with that name, was one of the players permanently banned from playing professional Baseball after the scandal during the nineteen nineteen World Series in which several Chicago White Sox players, including Shoelis Joe Jackson, conspired with gamblers to throw the series that they were having against the Cincinnati Reds, so in other words, to

lose on purpose. A Gulf Stream to jet sold for four point nine million dollars to a charter flight company in Africa, so it wasn't sold to an individual but rather a company. In two thousand two, one eBay listing was for a house that was built inside an old missile silo that was constructed during the Cold War. The house sold for two point one million dollars. There was an in Zo Ferrari, of which only three hundred ninety

nine were ever made. It went up for auction in two thousand four and sold for more than a million dollars. The original Hollywood sign, if you're familiar with that, that's on the Hollywood Hills. The original sign was replaced back in ninety eight, and the original letters, which are fifty ft tall, went up for sale in two thousand five and sold for four hundred fifty thousand dollars. There was the gig yacht that I mentioned earlier in a previous episode,

it's still a top item. In fact, depending upon the sourcer looking at it is the most expensive thing that has ever been sold on eBay. It was a fifty percent down payment on eBay and that ended up being eighty five million dollars. And as far as I can tell, it's for a boat that has yet to have been built it it still doesn't really exist other than in concept form. That sale happened back in two thousand six. Also in two thousand six, a chunk of meteorite from

Mars sold for four d fifty thousand dollars. It had crashed in Nigeria. Back in nineteen sixty two, there was a bottle of Samuel Alsop's Arctic Ale that was brewed especially for the nineteenth century explorer Sir Edward Belcher for his visit to the Arctic, because he wanted a beer that wouldn't freeze in Arctic temperatures. It sold for five hundred three thousand dollars. A bottle of beer for five hundred three thousand dollars. Thank goodness, it wasn't a six pack.

Right At Kate Middleton's wedding to Prince William of England, Princess Beatrice wore a hat that I can only describe as totally hideous. What do I know, I'm not a royalty I got I got no noble blood in me. But anyway, this monstrosity, and you really need to look at a picture of this. In fact, I'm gonna have to show Tari a picture of Princess Beatrice's hat when this episode is over. It's sold for eighty one English pounds.

Back in two thousand eleven, oh during a charity auction, eBay offered up the chance to have lunch with Warren Buffett, and this has become an annual event since then. And the initial lunch sold for three point four million dollars and no telling that actually included dessert or not. In two thousand twelve, an Italian village called pratt O Richia, which was nearly vacant, it was almost abandoned, had been

auctioned off for three point one million dollars. It is not the only town that has gone up for auction on eBay. Others include Albert, Texas and Bridgeville, California. Also in two thousand twelve, a letter written by Albert Einstein sold for three million dollars on eBay. The winning bidder was a philosopher named Eric good Kind or good Kind,

more likely because of the spelling of that name. A lot that contained six d seventy five vintage lunch boxes dating as far back as the nineteen fifties sold for one point seven million dollars in September two thousand thirteen. So someone really likes their lunch boxes. The car featured at the end of the nineteen seventy eight film Greece sold for one eighty thousand dollars in February fourteen. And a copy of Action Comics number one, which was the

first appearance of Superman. It originally sold for ten cents when it came out in nineteen thirty eight. This new or not new, but this, this well preserved copy of Action Comics number one, sold for three point two million dollars in an auction in August. Here's some other stuff I found while looking for weird things that have been up for auction. Now these are from other sites, not

just eBay's official timeline. So again I wasn't able to confirm all of these actually happened, but they're reported widely, so take it with a grain of salt Justin Timberlake's half eaten fringe toast. Some fan was able to get hold of the leftovers that Justin Timberlake left behind after eating French toast, and it sold for more than a grand In two thousand you a corn flake that vaguely resembled the shape of Illinois went up for auction once.

Various haunted dolls have been sold on eBay. All fans of the podcast of My Brother, My Brother and Me can attest to this, as they do a Haunted Dolls segment occasionally on their show. A derrito chip said to be in the shape of the Pope's hat went on sale on an eBay auction. Uh, and I mean, come on, they all kind of are the shape of a pope's hat. There was a cemetery plot that went up for auction on eBay, A special cemetery plot in California, located near

Marilyn Monroe's grave. It was actually occupied. It was not an empty plot when I went up for sale. Was occupied by Richard Poncher, whose widow decided to put the plot up for sales an above ground plot so they didn't have to dig anybody up but they decided. The widow decided she was going to sell the plot to someone on an auction and move her husband's remains to

somewhere else. It sold for four point six million dollars, according to Time, and she had decided to do this in order to pay the mortgage on her Beverly Hills home and then move somewhere else. Uh. Also, once upon a time a user put up for sale or for for auction, the Meaning of Life, not the Monty Python movie, but this person said that he had supposedly discovered what the true meaning of life was and he was ready

to auction it off to the highest bidder. The highest bidder paid the prinsle Lie sum of three dollars and twenty six cents. And I suppose they've kept the secret because it was hard earned. For less than five bucks. They got the meaning of life, apparently, And that wraps up this discussion about eBay. It was a lot of fun to look into this company, and I learned a lot going through it, especially about the very uh bold moves that various eBay executives have made throughout its history,

both to great effect and sometimes too great detriment. UH. Really kind of a fascinating story overall, and Pierre made Are, who launched the whole thing, seems like he he's a pretty cool guy. UM definitely someone who really believes in giving back to communities. He has done an awful lot of conservation work in Hawaii as well, and I find that really admirable. So fascinating story. I can't wait to look at the next company history. I haven't quite decided

which company I'm going to focus on next. I want to do a couple of episodes that are not company focused before I do another story of series because it gets pretty long having to do three or four episodes about the same subject. So I'm gonna mix it up a little bit over the next couple. I hope you guys enjoy it. And uh, I hope you guys are ready to let me know what you want to hear. Send me a message, tell me about any tech companies or products or trends, or maybe there's a person in

tech you would like me to focus on. Send me a message. The email address is tech Stuff at house touff Works dot com, or drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle of both of those is tech Stuff H. S W. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram and I'll talk to you again really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics, because at how stuff Works dot com