The history of online auctions is a chequered one. It goes all the way back to the dawn of the internet. To tell the story accurately, we must travel all the way back to the birth of the internet. And when we say the birth of the internet, we do mean birth.
Many people would look back at online auctions as we know them today and think of them as a fairly modern technological development. Well, you would only be half right. You see, the online auctions that we know and use today actually have their origins in the days even before the first internet browser was invented. You can also opt for Computer Auctions if you want to buy computers.
Online auctions first began almost as soon as the internet was invented. Granted, they weren't exactly the online auctions that we all know and love today, but they were online auctions none the less. These auctions would be held predominantly via email discussion and other text-based mediums which utilized the internet as a newfound connection device.
The first modern-day recognizable versions of online auctions however were not seen until around the year 1995. At this point in the history of auctions, some of the major auctioneering powerhouses that we know today were born. This was at a time when the internet was still in its young days, and the technology which made this form of online bidding available was still what many computer scientists at the time considered proprietary technology.