Author Description

In 2008, I started working on a plan to create a modern, graphic based, data driven, information archive, online auction site; a site that would provide many benefits that Ebay.com does not. A GUI to Ebay's MS-DOS, in this analogy. While Ebay.com has made many revenue-driven changes over the years, the one thing that remains fundamentally the same is the look, functionality, and lack of readily available historical pricing information, educational materials for collectors, and much more. Outside of self-funding, or finding financial backers, it occurred to me that Yahoo! would be a good venue to start this site. Their auction business had failed in 2007, and the one I was proposing incorporated a social networking component, data archive, and a host of other benefits that they could leverage for their other businesses. I submitted the industry white paper contained in this book, to Yahoo!, in March, 2013. As with practically all unsolicited proposals, it generated no response. At this time, I decided to publish my paper, and to share with other collectors my vision for an online auction site that would be beneficial to buyers and sellers, and provide historical, accurate, pricing information, an image archive, educational materials, a social network, and more. Also included is a brief history of collecting, analyses of seller costs over the years, and more. Enjoy!