The first thing I bought was a t-shirt for my son that has a line across the chest, and the words “You Must Be This Tall To Ride” on it. A customer was wearing it and I just had to have one. He told me it was no longer available at the store he bought it at, but to try eBay. I found it, bought it, and decided eBay was this magical place where you could find whatever you want. Now I know that’s totally wrong, but those first few searches were fun!
I bought the shirt because when my son was little, he was very short, and the day he finally reached the “You must be this tall to ride” arrow was a huge day for him! I wasn’t thinking that the shirt might have other connotations for a tall 18-year-old with a very short girlfriend. He still can’t wear that shirt around the girlfriend’s father!
So what was the very first thing you bought on eBay?
Probably Atari 2600 cartridges, since that’s what I initially went to eBay to find. (I was a collector for a number of years, and may be again at some point, but at the time I was just building up my collection)
My first ebay experience was a good one. I bought a set of Metrinch wrenches for my husband for about $200 less than retail. He was deliriously happy with them, and bragged for months about how his wife spent hours online to find them (it really took about a minute).
My first purchase was a replacement DVD drive for my Xbox, just about a year and a half ago. My original drive started giving “dirty disc errors” every time you looked at it wrong, so it had to go. So, I got an aftermarket drive that a resourceful eBay person had modded to work in the Xbox. It has worked like a charm ever since.
My first ebay purchase was a pair of brass rabbits. Rabbits are my totem animal; I think it’s because of the way they look all cuddly and cute and fluffy and innocent, and then they get mad and claw your entrails out. That appeals to me. Never underestimate the bunny!
My first, and to date only, e-bay purchase was a voice activated R2-D2. It was a Christmas gift for my boyfriend, but he had to box it up because it kept fighting with the Roomba.
Two tickets to a Barenaked Ladies concert in Baltimore, 10th row aisle just to the right of center for an EXTREMELY reasonable price given what tickets to that show were going for.
I search for stuff there all the time, but I virtually always end up getting it somewhere else in the end for one reason or another.
I honestly can’t remember which of these was first: a stuffed Kermit that I got for my dad (family in-joke), or a used copy of Now That’s What I Call Music 2 (double casette, British, out of print). Whichever one it was, I left feedback for the seller on April 17, 2001.
Actually, I got a Pachinko Machine as a secret present to my wife. She had no idea I was getting it for her (She had one in the house as a kid). So this huge box shows up two weeks before christmas and I say ‘If you can figure out what it is, you can open it now.’
I think that my first purchase was an amber glass bank in the shape of an owl, with the words “BE WISE SAVE MONEY” on the bottom. I named it Owlbert. Later I got a second one, of clear glass, and named it Owlene. I talk to them, in front of my husband, which drives him up the wall.
My second purchase was a set of half a dozen hottles (glass thingies to make tea in, not teapots).
I undoubtably bought a glass paperweight first but I don’t remember which one it was. I pretty much stuck to paperweights and fancy glass bowls. I haven’t bought anything in quite a while but a check of my feedback shows I got my first one (positive, of course) almost exactly six years ago.
An out-of-print cookbook, the one that was my grandmother’s standard (when she wasn’t using the recipes collected on scraps of paper and index cards). It’s not quite as good as having her own copy, but still loads of fun to read through it like I did when I was a kid.
