Member-only story
The Last Book Sale
My eBay auction for fun, profit and a cleaner home had unintended consequences
About a decade ago, as eBay crested its zenith, I reactivated my long-idle account for one last fling with the online auction site.
I was mostly a buyer when I logged onto eBay in the mid-‘aughts, hunting for comic books, back issues of magazines from my high school days, photo equipment and used electronics. I didn’t care about the get-rich-quick schemes that people touted left and right on user forums. (My ex-husband did, but I ignored his pleas to help him finance the poorly planned, inventory-heavy eBay selling ideas he floated.)
We were newlyweds and had just upsized from a tiny Somerville studio to a two-bedroom apartment in Nonantum, and suddenly I had enough room to collect things and display them on actual shelves. Those were heady days. I found a Hoosier cabinet in the Craigslist free section and used it to store the 24 giant wooden salad bowls we’d been given thanks to a gift list snafu. It was big enough to display the shiny new Ikea dishware I’d bought with the gift cards our more sensible relatives bestowed on us (along with new furniture, shelving, a corner desk and an actual sofa. Goodbye, ratty futon). And to decorate, I hit eBay, buying kitschy collectibles, old film cameras, and other tchotchkes to display.
