I am not a big user of eBay.

In fact, until last week I had never sold a single item using the second most famous auction expert behind Dave Dickinson. However, as I am currently emptying out a flat that is to be sold imminently, it was a case of paying someone to take away all the old furniture, or see if someone out there was willing to give me a few pounds for it. I saw it as a low risk option.

I went ahead and listed my old two and three seater sofas with no reserve price. I took some photos, described them in detail and waited for the generous bids to come in.

Three days later, while I was still waiting for an opening bid of 99p, I began to doubt the effectiveness of this particular sales channel. I would check eBay every few hours in the hope of a new bid, much like a new blogger checking to see if someone has read and commented the drivel they had put up on the Internet.

By the fifth day I was looking at recouping the total sum of five English pounds of the eight hundred I had spent of the sofas five years earlier, not to mention the time and effort I had expended in putting the item up for sale in the first place.  That is depreciation for you in Gordon Brown’s Britain.

On Sunday evening, as the bid drew to a close I was at a friends for dinner. As something of an eBay aficionado he suggested watching the bid ‘live’ in its closing minutes, as apparently it gets a bit exciting. I am not used to intently watching the internet unless there are some jiggling boobs involved, but I relented and we began to watch the ten minute countdown.

As the bid reached the ‘three minutes remaining’ notice, it began to happen. The bid price leapt by twenty pounds in almost the blink of an eye. Then, as the final few seconds drew closer it began leaping by five pound increments on almost every refresh of the screen.  I have not sat on a computer pressing a button so frequently and repeatedly since Daley Thompson’s Decathlon was launched for the Spectrum 48.

It felt a bit like winning on a slot machine in Vegas, except you didn’t have to put any cash in, and every time you pressed refresh you were guaranteed to win some more. I am ashamed to admit there was some whoopin’ and a hollerin’.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am grateful to get sixty pounds for something I had planned to throw away, but can someone tell me what is the point of the previous six and three-quarter days? Why can’t we just skip to the frantic bidding bit that is actually exciting? The current method is a bit like spending the week on boring old foreplay whilst waiting for a three minute roll in the hay on Sunday night. No matter how good the three minutes are, you really should be looking for ways to cut down on the foreplay.

That said, I have spent an hour in the loft this morning looking for random shit to sell. I think I may be developing something of a problem.

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