In April of 1997, listings of Beanie Babies surged to 2,500 separate auctions, and eBay assigned them their own category. When rare and discontinued Beanie Babies suddenly started going for hundreds, even thousands, of dollars at auction, eBay reaped the attendant press attention thanks to its position at ground zero of the craze. Within a month, that single Beanie Baby category was responsible for 6.6% of the entire site’s sales volume.10 eBay was not exactly the company that Beanie Babies built, but Beanie Babies certainly brought eBay to the world’s attention.
