In Praise of eBay

Flat lay of a partial press archive drawn from clipping files acquired on eBay while doing research ahead of an exhibition with David Letterman. Courtesy of the writer.
 

By BIANCA BOVA December 2, 2025

My avocation is research. Often narrowly focused to a degree that verges on obsessive, and  not always with great point to anyone but myself. 
I grew up in the computer age. I can remember the green glow of the DOS desktop my parents ran their business on during my childhood, and the irritating hum of its dot matrix printer, the edges of whose paper I was tasked with folding and separating, folding and separating. I can remember the advent of the internet, being wide-eyed at its dangerous promise. I have all my life been voracious in my interests, and the notion that I was no longer beholden to the contents of the Dyer, Indiana public library was thrilling. The scope had widened, and has continued to widen ever since. The internet, for all its heinousness, is a miracle.

The internet’s greatest gift is eBay (the internet’s greatest sin is Google Lens–a separate subject). This is especially true for researchers, as eBay is the digital pathway back to physical media, the serpent eating its own tail, our collective cultural past made available wholesale by modern means.
Over the course of three months in the Spring of this year I acquired a small inventory of press from eBay in support of an ongoing research project related to the work of David Letterman. Its basis is a suite of clipping files, containing within them the following: articles from People (1986), Rolling Stone (1993; 1994; 2011), Playboy (1994), and Esquire (1994); a partial press kit issued by HBO in the early 1980s; an unlabeled press photo from sometime in the 1990s; newspaper advertisements from 1980 and 1994; and whole copies of Newsweek (1986) and Rolling Stone (1982). In addition, I sought out copies of Playboy (1988), Interview (1986), GQ (1993), and New York magazine (1983). Also acquired from eBay on my behalf: a copy of the Chicago Sun-Times supplement tv prevue (1983); a signed headshot (1993; undeniably thoughtful, though the collecting of signed headshots remains the providence of stalkers and dry cleaners); and another Playboy (1984). The grand total spent is significantly less than the cost of accessing all of the same content (assuming all of it could be accessed in the first place) behind digital paywalls. These materials also naturally include the images intended to accompany their copy–something many online periodical archives now disinclude–and they are mine to keep. They do not expire and I can adhere as many annotated translucent post-it notes to them as I deem necessary. 

The eBay listing from which a copy of New York from 1983 magazine was acquired. Courtesy of the writer.

Though eBay has evolved in format, eschewing bidding in favor of buy-it-now buttons, it is vital to remember that it burst forth onto the early internet with one of the stranger applications of the American Dream: every man his own auction house. I haven’t the faintest idea who these people are, selling me forty year old copies of New York magazine out in Mill Valley, California for $5.25, shipping included (God bless Media Mail), or how much of a living this constitutes for them. It seems a remarkable act of faith on their part to believe that one day, at long last, someone seeking out a piece of James Wolcott criticism that ran the week of May 30, 1983 will turn up. Not just an act of faith; a demonstration of patience. 

Lo, we do turn up. So it is this belief system—strange in its humanity, antithetical to its siblings in commerce—that begets all the good any of us do with what they’ve sold us. I’ve said more than once: I owe my entire research practice to art dealers, volunteer archivists, and eBay. If I had to narrow that list to one source, it would unquestionably be the latter most, as I’ve never met one of the former two that didn’t make use of it as much or more than I do. Yet I’ve not seen eBay cited; not seen it appear in a list of acknowledgments anywhere; not heard it come up in the course of a lecture or a panel talk. Still it serves its purpose uncomplainingly, a silent sentinel Janus looking forever forward and forever back, providing for us what the culture once knew and carelessly discarded, and—one day—will want to know again.