An urban legend still circulating to this day incorrectly states that the online auction platform known as eBay was started when founder Pierre Omidyar wanted to get rid of his wifes PEZ collection. This legend of the companys founding has been disputed multiple times. Pierre actually started the company out of his home in September of 1995. The original name of the platform was Auction Web, but soon eBay would become the new moniker. The basic idea was to create a place where buyers and sellers could engage in an online marketplace. I was incredibly lucky at the time, as I was an early adopter to the platform and made a livelihood by buying and selling collectibles on the site. In fact, back in the 1990s and early to mid-2000s, eBay was synonymous with the antiques and collectibles trade, and at one time the company boasted having almost 30,000 categories devoted to the collectibles trade alone. eBay alone is credited with spawning multiple speculative bubbles within the trade. The Beanie Baby craze, vintage PEZ dispensers, certain 1990s action figures, Atari video games, and even comic books all benefited from the rise of eBay. Since eBay was highly regarded as the first online auction platform that was accepted by the masses, competition was a given. The rise of Yahoo Auctions in the late 1990s was supposed to deliver eBay a death blow, but it instead just became a secondary alternative that had looser restrictions and virtually no fees. True competition in the collectibles world would come when high-profile auction houses started to open online venues to attract bidders. It was at this time that almost every major company was attempting to transition to having an online presence. Antique and collectible dealers were not immune from the trend. I fondly remember doing business with well-respected coin dealers as early as 2001 and, yes, most of these well-known dealers are still around today. Much like most new companies with a new concept to explore, eBay wanted to expand. Collectibles were already providing a lot of revenue for eBay, but eBay wanted to attract major corporations to their site, thinking they could provide a good revenue stream by selling their own products. To be fair to eBay, this was a good strategy. A major manufacturer could potentially use the site to clear out surplus inventory or as an additional revenue stream to make their products available in other markets. Unlike a small collectibles reseller who only had a limited amount of inventory, a major corporation could potentially list their entire inventory over and over again. Over time, eBay started to cater to these types of corporations at the expense of smaller sellers. Continuously raising fees and adopting controversial policies ensured that smaller sellers were being placed second when compared to major corporations and larger sellers. By the late 2000s, it became quite clear that eBay was no longer the company it once was. By this time, collecting categories on the site were either discontinued altogether or combined into others. Fast forward to the last few years, and suddenly the collectibles marketplace is on fire. Numerous collecting categories are soaring to new heights, and with the advent of third-party grading affecting everything from comic books and toys to trading cards and video games, lots of collectibles can be easily sold sight unseen with little risk. Then the pandemic had millions of collectors inside on their computers; eBay, among other auction sites and collectible dealers, benefited during this time. This caused the company to move further into the collectibles marketplace with the advent of the eBay Vault. Now collectors of graded trading cards (from Pokemon to sports cards) could have eBay hold their treasures in a state of the art climate controlled storage facility. eBay was quickly starting to cater again to the same collectors who once flocked to their site in 1995, but even the advent of eBay Vault wasnt the companys biggest announcement. On Aug. 22, 2022, the company put out a press release stating they agreed to a $295 million acquisition of the collectible trading card platform TCGPlayer. TCGPlayer is an online marketplace that caters specifically to the buying and selling of collectible trading card games like Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon, and YuGiOh. When the announcement was made, it caused a lot of controversy among collectors operating in this segment of the collectibles market. TCGPlayer was always known as an alternative marketplace to eBay, and now that it is being gobbled up by a competitor, some enthusiasts are not happy. Luckily, however, it appears that eBay is going to keep the company independent from eBay,com, so perhaps the outcry is overblown at present time. Acquisitions in the antiques and collectibles trade are nothing new, and that will be discussed in an upcoming article. Personally, I consider eBays actions the last few years to be positive. As someone who stuck by the platform since the beginning, I always felt that eBay needed to return to its roots. That said, I am anything but naive and fully recognize that the company is doing this in response to the overall market conditions in the collectibles trade. Should we return to a time where the collectibles trade is not on fire like it is today, eBay may choose to go in another direction yet again. Make no mistake, however, these moves are a testament to just how hot the market for certain collectibles is at present time. Speculators, be warned! Shawn Surmick has been an avid collector since the age of 12. He currently resides in his hometown of Boyertown, Pa., and is a passionate collector of antiques and collectibles. His articles focus on various topics affecting the marketplace