Digitizing the Flea Market: eBay as a Data Source for Historic Collections

The online auction site eBay has overtaken face-to-face transactions as the primary means of doing business for collectors and sellers of unique and ephemeral materials. Historical societies, museums, and archives also increasingly collect ephemera as records of social and cultural history,. This presentation argues that the digitized flea market, as epitomized by eBay, replaces in-person sales while also providing a stream of rich information about a previously invisible, unquantifiable marketplace. Furthermore, identifying factors that influence collectibles buyers' behavior in online auction sales can also shed light on factors affecting user behaviors in digital libraries. Data from a survey of over 1,000 recent home movie auction listings on eBay suggest how eBay may be used as a data source by collectors, as well as the users and designers of digital libraries.