eBay launched the first major online person-to-person auction site in 1995, originally under the name AuctionWeb. Pierre Omidyar wrote the site’s initial code over Labor Day weekend and created a marketplace where individuals could list items and buyers could bid directly.
The first item sold was a broken laser pointer. Omidyar listed it as a test, expecting nobody to want it, but a buyer paid $14.83. That small transaction demonstrated that strangers could discover one another online and establish a price through competitive bidding.
The wording matters: earlier online auctions existed, including business-oriented services, so eBay is not necessarily the first auction activity ever conducted online. Its breakthrough was the scalable consumer-to-consumer marketplace. The company was initially called AuctionWeb and adopted the eBay name later; eBay therefore refers both to the mature company and, informally, to the 1995 service that began its history.