This weekend marked my ten-year anniversary as a member of eBay. A young Poe first signed up on November 1, 1998.

For some obsessive reason, I’ve kept archives of thousands upon thousands of emails from my college years onward, but I apparently didn’t start doing that until my junior year. The earliest item I can find is from May 1999. It was an Emperor’s Royal Guard figure from the 1990s Power of the Force Star Wars line; I remember having a SW renaissance around that time, largely driven by videogames such as Jedi Knight and Rogue Squadron.

It’s hard to judge just how much of an effect eBay has had on action figure collecting or, hell, collecting anything. It changed the whole game. If you wanted to collect vintage action figures, you didn’t have to haunt flea markets, scour yard sales or drive hundreds of miles to comic conventions–you could just surf from the comfort of your own home.

Initially, eBay also offered the thrill of bidding, which was a big part of its early appeal, I think. Bidding was fun until eBay’s membership boomed; at that point, between sniping and people able to pay exorbitant amounts for something they wanted, bidding became less appealing. For years now, I’ve been much more likely to purchase something via Buy-It-Now than by bidding. OK, part of that is impatience, too–if you’re willing to wait through an auction, you’ll probably spend a bit less money than you would on a BIN.

I’m reluctant to calculate how much money I’ve sunk into eBay over the last decade, though the numbers would be slightly offset by the selling I’ve done (back in 2001, I got $137 for the run-down old Fortress Maximus my parents had bought brand-new for $100 in 1987). But only very slightly.

But I think eBay has been a good thing for the hobby. Aside from the obvious usefulness of a G.I. Joe collector in Pennsylvania being able to buy a 12″ Joe found by an Ohio grandmother in her attic, it has helped in many other ways. It gives collectors a rough idea of the relative value and rarity of figures at any given time (though it also can play a more nefarious role in driving prices upward). If a Boston fan really wants a McFarlane Tom Brady figure, he can buy one off eBay from a seller in Indianapolis who can’t give it away.

EBay can even be used–and I do this pretty often–to track geographically where in the U.S. new toys have shown up in stores. I try not to start haunting the Boston-area toy stores for new DCUC figures until I see a few New England auctions for them.

That’s not to say eBay isn’t a scalper’s haven–it is, especially for hard-to-find variant figures. But let’s be fair: it’s really not any different from the old days when you’d either have to go without the figure entirely or get gouged at a convention. At least with eBay you have a chance to own it, as expensive as it may be.

The mistake collectors make is to buy figures off eBay when they’ve just hit retail. We’ve all done this on occasion; just a few weeks ago I bought an unmasked Deathstroke off eBay at an inflated price, only to find not one, but two at retail in the weeks since. Some scalpers thrive off collectors’ impatience.

Still, I’d much happier as an action figure collector in a world with eBay than I would be without it. I know that if there’s some figure I really want, I can find it…though I may have to sell an organ to afford it.