Word: auctions
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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When you're worth $10 billion, you can afford to collect Gulfstreams, Ferraris and yachts. But last week Jeff Bezos, the founder of e-tailing dynamo Amazon.com had his sights set a little lower. Like millions of Internet surfers searching for their favorite obscure trinkets, Bezos joined an online auction, bidding for a pack of 1977 Star Wars trading cards. Alas, the buying force was not with him. He dropped out when the price got too high...
...everything from stereos and cruises to a Coke bottling plant and the historic town of Johnsonville, Conn. Bezos' is just the latest firm to recognize the Web as the perfect medium to match buyers and sellers in a capitalist free-for-all: Net portal Yahoo rolled out an auction site last fall, and America Online just struck a partnership with industry leader eBay...
With its own auction launch, Amazon continues its mutation from bookseller to e-tailer nonpareil. The auction area is carrying tens of thousands of items, including a signed copy of Hem-ingway's A Farewell to Arms--Amazon will, of course, be strong in rare books. "Our vision is to build a place to find and discover anything our customers might want to buy...[including] car parts and spark plugs," says Bezos, whose firm's ever inflating stock price jumped an additional 15% on the news. Says Larry Schwartz, president of rival Auction Universe: "It's kind of frightening--they...
...seller before sending off a fat check in the mail. However, a small group of parasites, including a Florida eBay user who was recently ordered to pay $23,000 in restitution, continue to plague this electronic marketplace. Two-thirds of all Internet fraud complaints last year were directed at auction sites, according to the National Consumers' League. And antique dealers, who quickly adapted to e-auctions, find themselves dealing with amateurs who wouldn't know Caravaggio from formaggio. Peter Woolman, a British antiques dealer in Delray Beach, Fla., is one such frustrated buyer. "It's full of fakes," he complains...
...help improve those odds, eBay, Auction Universe and Amazon.com all offer some type of insurance and recommend that people use escrow services. Industry pioneer Onsale.com which conducts only business-to-consumer auctions, guarantees its products...