Good point, Bob.

eBay is what it is, and like a Lava lamp, it looks a little different each time you look at it.

What started out as a niche Pez collector trading board soon became something fairly similar to a traditional auction, then evolved into some sort of a hybrid retail/auction site, then back more towards regular auctions as sellers became more sophisticated, and now the retail type sellers are coming on real strong again. And the number of registered users, the burden on the infrastructre, and the sheer dollar volume of transactions has been growing exponentially all teh while. Sort of like the PC industry 20 years ago, it's been a wild ride!

All the while, eBay has had the unenviable job of trying to manage this growth, and keep the both the old and new users happy. Some of us want eBay to be like it used to be, mainly collectors using the site to share their hobby. Others want it to be a huge shopping mall, with bath towels and porno videos right next to Pre-Columbian antiques and Fine Art.

I'm somewhere in the middle of all that. I love antique gambling chips, and am delighted I have a nice online place to find additionas to my collection as a buyer, and to offer my chips as a seller. Every now and then I'll get an email from a bidder who says "You sell a lot of chips, I'm coming to Scottsdale, where is your store?" I LOL.

I pay eBay about $275 per month on average, and get worldwide exposure for my funky old mud chips. It's not exactly free, but it's dirt cheap. I use hidden counters, and probably get 1,000 page views per day on average. Shoot, I couldn't get a lousy 500 sq. ft. strip mall store front for $275 per week, much less $275 per month. Booth space at a decent antique or collector fair would cost a fortune compared to eBay, and none of those alternatives would bring me even a tiny fraction of the potential customers that eBay does.

So, am I an eBay apologist? I guess I am. On one hand, as a collector, I would prefer it was more like it used to be, I guess. But as a dealer, I like it BIG. The bigger the better. I say "bring on those electric drills and those toasters. Bring on those pornos and close-out items". Because I'm going to peel off a percentage of those looky-loos, and hook 'em on old poker chips!