People have always collected and traded; what's different today is the degree of intensity and mercantilism. Everything -- Grandma's punch bowl, the kids' Furbies -- is now a potential profit source; everyone either is a seller or ought to be thinking damn hard about it. When "The Phantom Menace" came out, for instance, collecting experts advised not to expect a big payoff from saving Darth Maul figurines in the original packages -- because everybody else has already had the same idea. Twenty years ago, relatively few people kept unopened Star Wars toys; today, why else would you buy one? (Think how many fools bought Pet Rocks and actually opened the boxes!)

A main beneficiary and supporter of this "every man his own thrift shop" mentality is Ebay, the wildly successful online auctioneer connecting shoppers with purveyors of finer Happy Meal toys worldwide. Sure, Ebay's success owes much to its ingenious e-sales model. But you shouldn't discount the effects of old-media buzz, either.

James Poniewozik's column appears in Media every Monday and Thursday + Biography + Archives

High-profile Ebay auctions of items like Mark McGwire home-run baseballs grabbed headlines and drew heavy traffic from rubberneckers. On May 22, MTV aired "Cool Crap," a special centered on an Ebay auction of music relics (a Geri Halliwell self-portrait, an appearance on "Total Request Live"). The show amounted to a giant commercial: It's a blast to blow your savings on the Internet! Likewise, for months Rosie O'Donnell has peddled celebrity-signed goods on Ebay for charity (using the site, despite her high-profile gun-control preaching, well before it announced a ban on weapons sales earlier this year). People magazine and other outlets have arranged similar synergistic auctions. It's a win-win-win: The sponsor looks good, needy kids get paid and Ebay's market cap goes up another gazillion dollars.

In this feedback loop of mutual flackery, Ebay uses the TV shows' reach and the shows use Ebay's coolness factor, which is enhanced with each plug. Ebay's greatest asset is making its name synonymous with "auction" even as Amazon and others horn in on its business; a Business Week cover story depicts the coming battle between Amazon's fixed-pricing model and Ebay's fluctuating "dynamic pricing." (A wonderful coinage, incidentally: Expect to hear it embraced by gas-station owners come the next Middle East crisis, as they dynamically up their pump prices by 50 percent.)

The site's had help from journalists too, who went nuts for Ebay early on. William Gibson penned the seminal love letter to the site in Wired early this year. Even the most thoughtful Ebay write-ups, like James Gleick's in a recent New Yorker, usually include first-person tales of auction action. You won't believe this weird thing I bought on Ebay! And there's plenty more where that came from! People will sell anything! I'm addicted! Hooked! Me, a level-headed writer! "Man, is it fun," gushed NPR's Rich Dean, recounting the swell time he had dropping $1,700 on a Gretsch hollow-body guitar. "It's a game for the buyers and the sellers."

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