Labor Day weekend. 1995. While most people were grilling burgers or dreading the end of summer, a 28-year-old programmer named Pierre Omidyar was sitting in his San Jose living room, coding something that would eventually break the global supply chain in the best way possible. If you’re asking when did eBay launch, the official answer is September 3, 1995. But it wasn't called eBay back then. It was AuctionWeb. And honestly? It looked terrible. It was a gray page with black text, hosted on a personal ISP account that Omidyar was paying about thirty bucks a month for.
He didn't have a business plan. He didn't have venture capital. He just had a fascination with how markets work. He wanted to see if the internet could create a "perfect" marketplace where everyone had the same information. No middleman. No corporate gatekeepers. Just people trading with people. It was a radical idea for a time when most people still thought the internet was just a place for university researchers to share PDFs.
The Broken Laser Pointer that Started Everything
You've probably heard the story about the Pez dispensers. The legend goes that Pierre’s fiancée (now wife), Pamela Wesley, wanted a way to trade Pez dispensers with other collectors, so he built the site for her. It’s a great story. It’s charming. It’s also mostly a PR stunt dreamt up by a marketing manager years later to make the company sound more "human" to journalists.
The real first item ever sold was a broken laser pointer.
Omidyar listed it for $14.83, fully expecting it to go nowhere because, well, it was broken. When someone actually bought it, Pierre emailed the guy to make sure he understood the thing didn't work. The buyer’s response is basically the foundation of the entire e-commerce industry: "I'm a collector of broken laser pointers."
That was the "aha" moment. If you can find a buyer for a broken piece of tech in 1995, you can sell literally anything. By the end of that first year, AuctionWeb was hosting thousands of auctions. It grew so fast that Pierre’s internet service provider eventually told him he had to upgrade to a commercial account because the traffic was crashing their servers. He started charging a small fee—just a few cents to list and a tiny percentage of the sale—simply to cover his hosting costs. He wasn't trying to get rich; he was just trying to keep the site from going dark.
📖 Related: What Was Invented By Benjamin Franklin: The Truth About His Weirdest Gadgets
When AuctionWeb Officially Became eBay
By 1997, the "AuctionWeb" name felt a bit clunky. Omidyar worked for a consulting firm called Echo Bay Technology Group. He liked the name "Echo Bay," but when he went to register https://www.google.com/search?q=echobay.com, he found out a gold mining company in Nevada already owned it.
He shortened it to eBay.
On September 1, 1997, the site officially rebranded. This wasn't just a name change; it was the moment the hobby became a behemoth. This was the same year Meg Whitman joined as CEO. She was a Harvard MBA who had worked at Hasbro and Disney. She looked at this chaotic, community-driven site and saw a multi-billion dollar opportunity. When she started, eBay had about 30 employees and revenues of roughly $4 million. By the time she left a decade later, it was a global powerhouse with thousands of employees and billions in revenue.
The Wild West of the Late Nineties
The growth was messy.
There was no PayPal yet. Think about that. If you won an auction in 1996, you had to put a paper check or a money order in an envelope, stick a stamp on it, and mail it to a total stranger. Then you waited. You waited for the check to arrive, you waited for it to clear, and then you waited for the seller to actually go to the post office. It was built entirely on a feedback system that relied on the idea that people are basically good.
👉 See also: When were iPhones invented and why the answer is actually complicated
It worked surprisingly well.
But it also led to some legendary weirdness. In the early days, you could find almost anything. Someone tried to sell a human kidney. Someone else tried to sell a F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet. Eventually, eBay had to start writing a "restricted items" list because the community's creativity for what could be auctioned was outpacing the legal framework of the internet.
Surprising Milestones You Might Not Know:
- 1996: The first third-party licensing deal happened with a company selling plane tickets.
- 1998: eBay goes public. Shares were priced at $18, but the price rocketed to $53 on the first day of trading. Omidyar became an instant billionaire.
- 1999: A massive site crash took eBay offline for 22 hours. Meg Whitman famously stayed in the server room with the engineers, ordering pizza and refusing to leave until it was fixed.
- 2002: eBay acquires PayPal for $1.5 billion. This changed everything. It removed the friction of the "paper check in the mail" and made instant commerce possible.
Why the Launch Date Still Matters Today
People ask when did eBay launch because they want to understand the origin of the modern internet. eBay wasn't just a website; it was a social experiment. It proved that "trust" could be a digital currency. Before eBay, the idea of giving your home address and money to a random person in another state was considered insane.
Today, the "eBay model" is the DNA of the entire gig economy. Without Pierre Omidyar’s 1995 experiment, we likely wouldn't have Airbnb, Uber, or Poshmark. All of those platforms rely on the same fundamental building block eBay pioneered: a peer-to-peer rating system that keeps people honest.
Interestingly, while Amazon focused on being the world’s biggest warehouse, eBay stayed true to being a marketplace. They don't own the inventory. They own the platform. This distinction is why eBay survived the dot-com bubble burst when so many other "e-tailers" went bankrupt. They didn't have massive overhead in unsold goods; they just had a community of collectors, side-hustlers, and small business owners who kept trading regardless of what the stock market was doing.
✨ Don't miss: Why Everyone Is Talking About the Gun Switch 3D Print and Why It Matters Now
Moving Past the Auction
If you log onto eBay today, it looks nothing like the 1995 version. Honestly, it doesn't even look like the 2010 version. The "Buy It Now" button, introduced in 2000, eventually overtook auctions as the primary way people shop on the site. About 80% of items sold on eBay now are new, and the "auction" part of the site—while still huge for collectibles—is no longer the main event.
But the spirit of that 1995 launch is still there in the weird corners of the site. You can still find people selling vintage car parts, rare Pokémon cards, and yes, even those Pez dispensers that supposedly started it all.
Actionable Takeaways for the Modern User
If you're looking to tap into that original 1995 energy and actually make money or find value on the platform today, here is how you do it effectively:
- Leverage the "Sold" Listings: Don't look at what people are asking for an item. Use the filter on the left sidebar to see "Sold Items." This is the only way to see the true market value of what you own.
- Master the "Orphan" Search: Look for common typos in listing titles (like "Laptp" instead of "Laptop"). These listings often get zero bids because they don't show up in standard searches, allowing you to snag items for a fraction of their value.
- Understand the 2026 Fee Structure: eBay has moved away from listing fees for most casual sellers, but they take a larger "final value fee" now. Factor in roughly 13-15% of the total sale price (including shipping and taxes) as eBay’s cut.
- Niche is King: The general merchandise market is dominated by Amazon. To succeed on eBay, you need to be in the "long tail." Rare parts, vintage clothing, and specific collectibles are where the highest margins remain.
The 1995 launch of eBay changed how we perceive value. It turned every basement and attic into a potential storefront. Whether you're a buyer or a seller, understanding that this started as a simple experiment in "human goodness" helps navigate the platform even decades later.
If you're curious about your own history on the site, you can actually go into your account settings and see your "Member Since" date. For some, that date is a badge of honor, marking them as pioneers of a digital frontier that started with a single broken laser pointer.
Next Steps for Your eBay Journey:
Check your attic or garage for items in high-demand categories like vintage tech (early iPods, Nintendo consoles) or 90s nostalgia. Use the eBay mobile app to scan barcodes and instantly see the current market "Sold" price. If you haven't sold in years, start with a low-value item to get familiar with the updated managed payments system, which now deposits funds directly into your bank account instead of using a separate PayPal balance.