MarineHeard161
When comes up sale today, the name eBay certainly comes to mind first. This site was the very first with what has become past the online auction, which began in 1995, when Pierre Omidyar sold his first item. The item was a broken laser pointer, which sold for $14.83 to some man who collected such objects.
The history from the online auction was born with that sale, and has continued to grow by exponential amounts since the first day. Omidyar quickly found that his hobby of making a web-based garage sale required to become a part-time business, which grew to some full-time endeavor within a very short time.
In lots of ways, it's thanks to eBay that other online auction sites exist. Amazon.com became a fierce competitor through the late 1990's, as did Yahoo! Auctions, who actually still have majority share of the market in certain countries.
Other sites, whilst not as big, were able to leave their mark. ePier, started with a handful of poor students, continues to be mostly of the auction sites to resist all storms and continues on today.
Today, there is a definite move away from auctions to more traditional ways of selling. C-list and other online classifieds are gaining popularity, and Amazon.com's open retail market has additionally gained quite a bit of share of the market with folks peddling goods from their garage.
However, much of their success is owed to the early pioneers of sale. Undoubtedly, you will see technology and new companies that take the market inside a different direction, leaving sale to be enjoyed by a niche group, just as it was in the beginning.