THE eBAY BLOCK
You can sell a human baby on eBAY for $2,000.00. You can sell a grilled cheese sandwich on eBAY with a char mark that somebody says looks like Jesus (like anyone would know what Jesus looked like) for $25,000.00. Yet eBay put a ceiling price of $5,000.00 on any Paintings By God I wanted to sell on eBay, saying I had to sell a lot of small items first–to gain the trust of the eBay ‘buy and sell’ community and work my way up to higher priced items, which would take about a year or more. That’s why I don’t sell my work on eBay.
eBay is a community of buy and sell addicts, who devalue items so they can keep buying and selling. It’s like a gambling addiction for the masses, the populace, the people with not much money, who nevertheless like the excitement of the gamble, the trade, the risk. It’s for people who can’t afford to trade on Wall Street.
eBay told me that I not only had to sell a lot of small items, but I also had to buy a lot of other people’s small items to gain their trust. “We want to get to know you first, so we know you’re not a fraud”, she said. I told her my whole life history, the history of my art, my hopes, my dreams, goals, obstacles… I felt like I was interviewing for a job that she didn’t want me to get. I told her I didn’t have a lot of small items to sell and I didn’t want to buy a lot of other people’s small items.
All the possessions I have I need and use, and I don’t have room for anybody else’s small stuff in my apartment. I wanted only to sell my art. But the rules were the rules–a $5,000.00 cap per painting. But then it became only one painting. I said in a very nice way that eBay was devaluing my art by pricing it for me – when they hadn’t even seen it. And what makes them experts on art in the first place?
She said that’s how the ‘buy and sell’ community works.
At many points throughout the conversation I thought I was talking to the CIA and military intelligence combined. She kept repeating the same policy over and over again.
No matter what I said, her response was always the same. It was like she was the government, always pushing me, ‘where’s the next attack going to be? When’s the next attack? Give us a date. Who? Give us an exact address and location.
I call that the eBay BLOCK.
~Sharon Lee Davies-Tight
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BIRTH OF A SEED™ 