auction

President of eBay Marketplaces Lorrie Norrington is leaving the company for "personal reasons," eBay announced yesterday. The company said it will look externally for a replacement, but in the interim, the Marketplaces management team will report directly to eBay CEO John Donahoe.

Since July 2008, Norrington has been in charge of eBay Marketplaces, the global division that manages eBay's auction site and other e-commerce sites. Prior to that role, she was responsible for Marketplaces' North American unit after serving as president of eBay International. She joined the company in June 2005 as CEO of Shopping.com, which … Read more

It didn't cost quite as much as the wallet-emptying $2.6 million that Pizza.com sold for back in 2008, but as of Wednesday evening, the domain Tshirts.com has a new owner.

Among the 934 domains up for grabs at domain auction company Moniker's live auction as part of the DOMAINfest conference in New York, just 19 were sold, including Tshirts.com, which fetched $1.265 million and included a handful of related domains like T-shirts.com and T-shirt.com. Following that was Disco.com, which sold for $255,000 and BigApple.com for a modest $70,… Read more

There has always been a small but dedicated market for vintage computers, with classic systems such as the Altair 8800 or the original Apple I going for thousands of dollars. The Apple II might be one of the more influential machines ever built, but it was fairly common and remains easy to find on eBay, with systems going for around $200 or less (a far cry from its original $1,200-plus price).

That said, there's one particular Apple II that collectors may be interested in, and that's the Apple II that served as the Swan Station computer on … Read more

CNET Car Tech will bring you highlights of the Mecum at Monterey collector car auction on Friday, August 13, 2010, live beginning at 1 pm PT. CNET's Brian Cooley will live-blog and post photos from the event. Join us for a feast of cars that often laid the ground work for today's high tech cars.

<a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=237a4c123d" >Mecum at Monterey auction</a>

After reading a recent article about places to sell unwanted consumer electronics online, I decided to look through my semivintage gear for items to recycle for some spare cash.

I located my original 16GB first-generation iPod Touch, purchased via Apple's Web site the week it was announced in 2007. Having barely been used in at least the past two years, it was in mint condition, and after carefully resetting it to the factory state (thereby wiping my apps and data), it was time to find a new home for my iPod Touch.

After checking out various resale sites such as Gazelle.com, which offered my $43 for my device, I snapped a couple of photos and put it up on eBay, with a minimum bid of around $95 and a Buy it Now price of $150. That seemed in line with what other similar units were selling for, which made sense, considering the least expensive current new model was an 8GB one for $199.

Until the last day of my auction, I had only a single bid, but I knew from previous experience most bidders jumped in at the last minute (as I did several years ago when purchasing my prized JVC Videosphere TVs). The hour before my auction ended, the bids started coming in, first past $100, then $125, to finally settle at $147.50.

Even though I was out socializing after work, I quickly dropped the winning bidder (who had a decent amount of positive feedback) a note, and directed him to my PayPal account. (Actually trying to get anything done through PayPal is an entire story by itself--if eBay looks like a Web site five years out of date, than sister company PayPal's Web site is like a medieval torture device.)

I quickly got a response from by winning bidder, and I was ready to declare this an almost entirely positive experience. But, several things about my winning bidder's response gave me pause. … Read more

Wall Street was predicting that tepid performance by eBay's auction business would offset strong gains by its PayPal division in its second-quarter earnings, but the e-commerce giant ended up beating expectations: It posted revenue of $2.2 billion, when $2.16 billion had been predicted.

That's a 6 percent gain from the second quarter of 2009, or a 15 percent gain if you consider that eBay sold off the majority of its ownership in telephony service Skype last November. PayPal performance was strong, as expected, posting record revenue for a second-quarter time frame.

"We delivered strong second … Read more

The Federal Communications Commission's plan to free up 500 megahertz of additional wireless spectrum got a significant boost from the White House.

On Monday, President Barack Obama signed a memorandum that commits the U.S. to making an additional 500MHz of government and commercial spectrum available for auction and for unlicensed use within the next 10 years. This goal of getting 500MHz more spectrum in the hands of wireless broadband providers over the next decade is a key part of the National Broadband Plan that the FCC presented to Congress earlier this year.

With the backing of Obama, the … Read more

Buying or selling used hi-fi--before the Internet--was a huge hassle. Expensive classified ads in newspapers and magazines were the only option for individual sellers and buyers; that, or trade your gear in to a hi-fi dealer.

Nowadays you can buy or sell hi-fi and pretty much everything else on eBay, but I've never used it. I've always sold my old gear on AudiogoN, which specializes in high-end audio components, such as preamplifiers, power amps, speakers, CD players, turntables, cables, etc.

If you're looking for great sounding bargains, you'll find plenty on AudiogoN. I saw a vacuum-tube Dynaco FM-3 radio offered for $139; a mint-condition Marantz 2220 stereo receiver for $245; an NAD 7100 receiver for $175; and a Dual 1019 turntable for $250. AudiogoN averages around 11,000 listings at any given time.

High-end gear that originally sold for big bucks is rarely cheap, because good, quality gear, even when it's decades old, retains its value. But even so, AudiogoN is a way to get the good stuff that would otherwise be out of range. I saw a Conrad-Johnson 16 LS vacuum-tube preamplifier that sold new for $8,000 listed for $3,500.

AudiogoN was founded in 1998 and now claims 295,000 registered members. Rates for sellers are just $6 for a classified ad (which runs 30 days); or $6 for an auction, that runs between 3 and 14 days. There's also a one percent surcharge on the sale price. Buyers pay nothing for the service. Best of all, almost everyone reading the listings is an audiophile, which certainly isn't the case for eBay. Here's a link to a mock ad, so you can get an idea of what they look like.

Manufacturers and retailers also advertise and sell gear on AudiogoN, and there's a wide range of active forums for audiophiles of every type. … Read more

A blogger recently reported a replica Bugatti Veyron available on eBay for $620,000. For a fake!

Even for a $1.7 million automobile, it's hardly a deal. One buyer purchased a 2008 Bugatti Veyron with only 801 miles on it at an auction for "only" $858,000.

The bargain was a result of an IRS specialty auction of Ponzi-schemer Scott Rothstein's luxury automobile collection June 3. The Florida lawyer used other people's money to curate a large stable of specialty vehicles, including a 1967 Corvette and a 208 Ford Expedition Limousine.

But the piece … Read more