These posts caused me to go back and see when I joined. I joined in June of 1998. For a few years I sold a lot on eBay. I just noticed that today my feedback is exactly 1111. The vast majority of that (well over 1000) is as a seller. Back in the day I was a niche seller and sold collectible paperback books. If I sold one for $25 (which I had paid 25 cents for) I was ecstatic. Later I branched into collectible cards.
Early on I had a program on my computer that would make a sound of "ca ching" whenever I got a bid on my auction (it was all auctions then -- the debate was whether to set a reserve or not). I loved to hear that bid sound.
Disneysteve is right that it was very different back then. Yes, I did write my HTML code. I would use my scanner to scan the front and back of my books (or the card) I was selling. Early on, I was on a forum and someone from eBay Magazine (yes, that was a thing) was looking for sellers to talk about how to use a scanner with eBay. So they interviewed me and I was quoted in the article. My brother was dumbfounded that they quoted me. "Couldn't they have found someone else?..."
Anyway, it was fun times. Back then there were a few annoyances. Toward the end it was more of a pain. eBay bought Paypal and that became a thing which had its pros and cons. Shipping was becoming an issue. So many sellers were selling stuff with "free" shipping but with the low value items I sold it was hard for me to do that.
It was a lot of work initially in that you had to do your listing from scratch. But as eBay offered more tools to sellers they became very pro Buyer and I was nervous to sell anything that was worth more than a few dollars. I had a friend who sold some fairly expensive stuff on eBay (jewelry) but I was leery to take the risk.
Also at that time I didn't have a source for goods to sell. The book and card markets dried up as used bookshops and card shops got wise to the fact that those things were worth money and they didn't sell them for 25 cents any more.
I had some friends who frequented garage sales. That sounded fun but they said you had to be there by 7:00 or so in the morning to get the good deals. I get up about 11:00 so that wasn't very appealing.
Still, it was a lot of fun and I would do it again perhaps if I had stuff to sell...
A few years ago I thought about selling some collectible porcelain figurines on eBay. I have collected these for many years and the prices on eBay are OK. I wouldn't mind selling some older pieces. My big fear was that I would sell something for a few hundred dollars and that a buy would claim it arrived broken or something...
