What was the first item you sold on eBay?
What was the first item you sold on eBay?
The first item I ever sold on eBay was a book called The Water of Life: A Tale of the Grateful Dead by Alan Trist with illustrations by Jim Carpenter. The book was a somewhat rare autographed first edition and it sold back in 2003. I have seen sellers asking up to $100 for this book today. I believe I found my copy at a Goodwill outlet store and I probably paid less than a dollar for it. The book sold for around twelve dollars. What a thrill it was to make my first sale! Creating my first eBay ad was a challenge because the world of online auctions was a completely foreign thing to me. I struggled with the eBay menus which seemed very vague at the time. I think I must have scanned the book cover because I did not even have a digital camera at that time. The book cover image above is the actual eBay image from my first ad.
Alan Trist was director of the Grateful Dead's music publishing company Ice Nine. After a bit of research I learned that Trist and Jerry Garcia, of the Grateful Dead were both injured in a car accident in 1961. One of the other passengers, 16-year-old Paul Speegle, was killed in the accident. When the crash occurred, Garcia, who was not the driver, was ejected through the windshield with such force that he was literally thrown out of his shoes.
I found this other very interesting link for the Grateful Dead Hour No. 386 which has a transcript of an interview with Trist in which he discusses the book. The program aired on KPFA in June, 1990. Link: