Auctions on eBay: A dying breed

Bruce Hershenson, who auctions vintage posters online, is hanging up his eBay gavel. For almost a decade, Hershenson's business epitomised the e-commerce that made eBay famous. He sold rare, collectible, sometimes kitschy memorabilia in online auctions that had a starting bid of 99 US cents. However, as the business of buying and selling over the Internet has matured, the thrill and novelty of auctions have given way to the convenience of one-click purchases. Hershenson held his last eBay auction 3 June. "The auctions are nothing like what they once were," he says. "They won't ever come back."

Auctions were once a pillar of e-commerce. People didn't simply shop on eBay. They hunted, they fought, they sweated, they won. These days, consumers are less enamored of the hassle of auctions, preferring to buy stuff quickly at a fixed price. Hershenson is emblematic of the legions of small business people who built their livelihoods on eBay but - like eBay itself - are having to rethink their whole approach to online sales.

Sales at Amazon.com, the leader in online sales of fixed-price goods, rose 37% in the first quarter of 2008. At eBay, where auctions make up 58% of the site's sales, revenue rose 14%. "If I really want something, I'm not going to goof around [in auctions] for a small savings," says Dave Dribin, a 34-year-old Chicago resident who used to bid on eBay items, but now only buys retail.

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