A broken laser pointer fetched $14.83
The first item sold on the site that became eBay was a nonworking laser pointer. Founder Pierre Omidyar listed it in 1995, when the service was still called AuctionWeb. A buyer paid $14.83 for it—not because it worked, but because he collected broken laser pointers.
That detail turns the sale from a simple oddity into a small lesson in how online marketplaces can work: an object one person considers useless may be exactly what another person wants. The internet made it easier for those two people to find each other, even when the potential buyer was rare or far away.
The market was the match
A broken pointer had little practical value as a tool. Its value came from the buyer’s personal interest, which a conventional local sale might never have uncovered. AuctionWeb did not need to decide whether the object was useful or desirable; it needed to give a seller a place to list it and a buyer a way to discover it and bid.
The sale became a memorable origin story because it captures the marketplace’s basic promise in miniature: a thing is not necessarily worthless just because its owner has no use for it. On the new site, even a malfunctioning gadget could find someone willing to pay for it.
