The key distinction is that we’re very much in the mold of the old ebay. We’re collectors ourselves and we take major pains to make sure our customers can reach us, interact with us and provide feedback for what needs to be improved for their specific collectibles category.

I don’t personally feel that what ebay is doing is in any way sinister but that it believes it needs to go in a different direction that doesn’t meet the needs of many in the previous community. Of course many of us do disagree with that choice but that’s a different discussion.

If you’ve got collectibles and you’re looking for the nostalgia of the old ebay magic don’t forget to give bidStart a look.

Sellers had it real good, too. When listing something, the thought in the back of the seller’s mind may have been, “will anyone buy this” …but no one ever wondered “will anyone see this”, for there was no doubt that all got their 15 minutes of fame. That fear of no exposure simply wasn’t there.

It was this way of presenting items- this churn- that defined the original ebay. I always assumed the government would stop the music, but never ebay mangement themselves.

I fear that in a few short years people will forget how well the system worked and how elegantly simple it was.

You can’t run auctions with a pay-per-click advertising mentality, as we’re now starting to see. A level playing field isn’t necessarily giving away “ad spots” for “free”, if that freedom is a site’s entire value proposition. Ebay in its original form proved an extremely useful tool to society and civilization as a whole. So much so that the Department of Commerce should have swooped in and taken it over. It was just that utilitarian.

The internet took a huge step backward with the loss of Liiteral Keyword Search/Time Ending Soonest and I’m slackjawed that no competitor has stepped in to offer pure auctions, (ie without bin or SCO’s) in this format.

It may be gone forever.