Do you remember the first item you ever sold online? Let us know by sending an email to ina@auctionbytes.com and we may publish your story. Today we hear from Laurra who "saw the light" with her first eBay sale!

Hi Ina,
It was back in the year 2000. I had just lost my job at the printing company I worked for for 25 years. I wasn't sure what I was going to do. I had tried to set up an eBay account and thought that was a good way to make money and stay home and care for my 80-year-old mom, who was a heart patient.

I had a little difficulty with the sign-up for the seller account so I let it go for about three weeks and looked for other jobs. My mom and I, one Sunday, went rummage saling. I really didn't think anybody would have anything because it was late in the afternoon. I walked into one sale and walked around the tables but didn't see anything that I was interested in.

We were walking out of the garage when I spied a box under a table with a little bit of glass showing out of the packing. I uncovered what turned out to be a slip shade chandelier; not one but two, from the 1920's. The lady said they had been stuffed in a big barrel in a corner of an old barn out on their farm for as long as she could remember and she was in her sixties.

I stood up and the lady promptly said "everything is half price"! There was a ten dollar sticker on the box. I wasn't sure what they were worth and being un-employed, I didn't have much cash so as I rubbed my upper lip and looked into the sky, I thought this might be a good one to start with! I handed the lady my $5.00 and carefully put them in my trunk.

I finally got my eBay ID squared away and my account set up but I only had a Polaroid camera I so hung the lamps on the back porch and I took the Polaroids. I scanned the Polaroids and started looking up lighting on eBay. Almost every step of the way was a learning experience for me. I finally found out what they were called, I didn't even know what they were but knew they looked old and very cool.

My husband wrote the ad, we uploaded the auction for 25 cents to eBay and it cost $1.75 to host the pictures for one month at an obscure hosting site in New York. Before to long we had twenty bids. Holy Cow! The chandeliers were at $160.00 by the end of the week and I was so thrilled. The last five minutes of the auction, they sold for $500.00 and I was screaming.

That was my weekly wage at the printing company when I left so as you might have guessed by now, Man-O-man I was hooked! After all these years, I have found my niche, selling lighting, costume jewelry, Mexican pottery and this and thats. A year later, I bought a bunch of necklaces in a jewelry box for a dollar twenty five and when I got home, I found one was a real cultured pearl diamond necklace that I sold for $3500.00. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it!

PS: My mom, who is 85, found a necklace at a junk shop for a quarter and sold it for $100.00 so she is hooked too!

Signed Laurra (User ID NoBossInk)