Ebay

SAN FRANCISCO - EBay hopes to lure more sellers by essentially doing away with "listing" fees for people who occasionally auction items on its site. Instead it will take a cut of the final selling price. Changes like the ones being announced Tuesday are meant to encourage more people to list items for sale. EBay Inc. told sellers Tuesday that starting March 30 they will be able to post up to 100 items for auction every 30 days without paying fees to list them. The items must have a starting bid of less than $1, and when they sell eBay will take 9 percent of the final price or $50, whichever is less.

A 34-year-old Florida man pleaded guilty late Wednesday to illegally selling night vision goggles and other military style gear online to an undercover federal agent in Baltimore pretending to be an overseas buyer — a charge that could land him in prison for 20 years. Anthony J. Torresi, of Coral Gables, did not have the required U.S. Department of State license to sell the items when he posted them on eBay and then arranged to sell them to a buyer who he believed was in New Zealand, according to the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office of Rod J. Rosenstein.

Shopping on eBay can have its advantages. Has a beautiful dress been moved to the sale rack in your favorite mall store, but they --- and all the others nearby --- are sold out of your size? Check eBay! After a friend tells you she called every location of a particular home decor chain on the Eastern seaboard last year but still failed to find the Christmas ornament she wanted, what do you do? Look on eBay! Feeling a bit nostalgic for that toy you coveted as a child but never got or want to introduce members of the next generation to a game you played nonstop when you were a kid?

There he was, before every major swim in the London Olympics, lost in thought and music pumping from headphones that covered his ears. And now, a clever company wants to sell you a pair of those Michael Phelps headphones. The red, white and blue headphones are available for pre-order on Ebay, through Sol Republic, which has inked a deal with Phelps. The headphones cost $149.99. A portion of the proceeds will to to the Michael Phelps Foundation. "He absolutely loves this brand," his agent Peter Carlisle told ESPN.

eBay Inc. may be the biggest online clothing seller, but it's still known for selling other people's castoffs. Now it wants shoppers to think of it when looking for trendy duds like hipster jeans and red ballerina flats. EBay will launch a new fashion microsite Monday. It's the latest in a series of changes that will sometimes have it acting more like an outlet mall or "private sale" Web site. EBay is working with major fashion brands and retailers such as Hugo Boss and Lord & Taylor to act as sellers.

Money makes the world go around. But dollars spent by giant technology companies to acquire trendy tech-related services and Internet sites increasingly aren't connected to reality or results. Nobody wants to look like yesterday's news or lose to competitors, so money is tossed wildly at the future. Skype is a software service created in 2003 that permits voice telephone calls over the Internet. Online auctioneer eBay Inc. liked the idea so much it decided to purchase the company for $2.6 billion in 2005, with more to be paid if results meet certain targets.

Shane Butcher is auctioning off "the American Dream," or at least a video game enthusiast version of it. Via one of the most unique eBay listings one can come across, Butcher is selling his chain of three video game stores, called R.U. Game?, his two homes, cars and almost all earthly possessions. The retail chain of the three Florida stores, which deal in new and used games and accessories, is the centerpiece of the listing, which has an asking price of $3.5 million, along with an immediate $10k good faith deposit required of the winning bidder.

Online auction bids for a human kidney recently reached $5.7 million, while offers for 500 pounds of choice marijuana were up to $10 million. Officials at eBay stopped them both but still don't know whether they were hoaxes or not.Either way, the incidents quickly took their place in the pantheon of odd, ridiculous and amazing stuff tucked among the millions of items up for bid each day.One man remembers finding an auction for a human soul, but didn't bid...

Online auction powerhouse eBay is expected soon to begin helping visitors buy and sell song downloads. The company had resisted the business because of uncertainties over copyright and digital distribution, but rapid growth in legitimate online music sales has persuaded it to begin a six-month test. "We know there are certain things where downloading is the preferred way," eBay spokesman Hani Durzy told the San Jose Mercury News, "and we needed to explore if this was a viable transaction."

I'm thinking about getting back into tech stocks and buying shares of eBay Inc. What is the outlook for this company? - S.B., via the Internet There's plenty of money to be made in online auction sales of everything from fishing rods to cookie jars, from digital cameras to sporting events tickets. It's a business with strong cash flow and no inventory requirements. The question is how far and fast 9-year-old eBay can continue to expand and how it will fare against an increasing number of competitors such as Amazon and Yahoo.

Shane Butcher is auctioning off "the American Dream," or at least a video game enthusiast version of it. Via one of the most unique eBay listings one can come across, Butcher is selling his chain of three video game stores, called R.U. Game?, his two homes, cars and almost all earthly possessions. The retail chain of the three Florida stores, which deal in new and used games and accessories, is the centerpiece of the listing, which has an asking price of $3.5 million, along with an immediate $10k good faith deposit required of the winning bidder.

Ronn Wade gingerly picked up the package wrapped in a simple white sheet and placed it on an examining table before slowly unwrapping the layers. And there it was. The mummified remains of a small child that had disappeared from University of Maryland School of Medicine years ago. With one look Wade knew it was part of the famed Burns Collection, an obscure set of medical mummies once used for dissection and the training of medical students and...

The 200-year-old mummified remains of a small child are making their way back to the University of Maryland School of Medicine after an absence in which they were posted for sale on eBay and languished for almost five years in a Michigan police evidence room. The effort to identify the mummy's home and return it was aided by a Port Huron, Mich., police lieutenant, a couple of astute Michigan anthropologists and the curator of a mummy collection originally assembled by a convicted 19th-century Scottish grave robber.

A former Howard County public schools IT technician was sentenced to two years in prison for stealing and reselling more than $200,000 worth of computers, computer parts and software, according to the county's state's attorney's office. Tina Marie Eiser, 39, of the 900 block of Jay Court in Glen Burnie, was sentenced Friday for a theft scheme where she ordered computer equipment for the school system and sold it on eBay. Eiser was also order to pay $210,000 restitution to the school system.

Economists believe that they can set a rational price for almost everything, so a few are trying their hand at crabbing. A team of economists from the University of Maryland, working with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, has devised an intriguing program to use $3.5 million in federal funds to buy back and retire seldom-used commercial crabbing licenses that have been issued to watermen working the Chesapeake Bay. The state has...

Shopping on eBay can have its advantages. Has a beautiful dress been moved to the sale rack in your favorite mall store, but they --- and all the others nearby --- are sold out of your size? Check eBay! After a friend tells you she called every location of a particular home decor chain on the Eastern seaboard last year but still failed to find the Christmas ornament she wanted, what do you do? Look on eBay! Feeling a bit nostalgic for that toy you coveted as a child but never got or want to introduce members of the next generation to a game you played nonstop when you were a kid?

When Lee Ann Wright moved to Baltimore two years ago, she made plans to start a home-based business selling women's clothing through the global online marketplace of eBay. After reading through the site's guidelines for beginners and purchasing an eBay seller's kit, Wright was intimidated by both the Web and business tasks ahead of her. So she called an eBay teacher for help. During a four-hour class last month at her Fells Point home, Wright learned how to set up a seller's account and picked up numerous tips for starting her business on eBay.

EBay Inc., the world's largest Web auctioneer, agreed yesterday to buy privately held Rent.com for $415 million in one of at least three acquisitions of classified listings companies this year. EBay said it would pay about $385 million in stock and $30 million in cash for Rent.com. The transaction, which is expected to close in the first quarter of 2005, will likely decrease the company's earnings for that year, eBay said. Launched in October 2001, Rent.com has become the most visited apartment-listing Web site in the nation, according to comScore MediaMetrix, eBay said.

Check out today's Groupon that they tried to hide by only posting it under San Diego:  http://www.groupon.com/deals/ebay . For $7, you get $15 towards a future eBay purchase. You must have a valid eBay and PayPal account but besides that there isn't much fine print. I guess eBay was feeling overshadowed my Amazon recently. 

In a large lab filled with rows of computers and other devices at the National Federation of the Blind, a small team of technical analysts works with gadgets and websites to test how easily they can be used by the blind. The latest site to pass muster is also one of the web's largest and busiest: the online auction site eBay. The Baltimore-based advocacy group recently struck a partnership with eBay to make the site more accessible to blind users. And eBay decided to go a big step further — with an investment of $250,000 in seed money to fund blind entrepreneurs who wish to use the site to start a small business.