Buy a Car on eBay - It's an Experience You Won't Forget

My mom traded my first car for a washing machine.

I rolled the second one - it looked like a crushed sardine can, but barely had a scratch.

When I was hit by a drunk driver, my third car got totaled as well - luckily, I wasn't hurt that time either.

I am now on lucky number 4, a 2004 Honda Accord with heated leather seats, sun/moon roof, power locks, an alarm system, power seats, power windows, and all sorts of other features I would not have been able to afford if I hadn't found this particular used car on eBay.

To make a long story somewhat shorter, I was able to buy my second car, a 2005 Toyota Celica, with money that came to me through winning a wrongful death lawsuit. I owned the car for about a year and a half before I stupidly swerved to miss a raccoon on a dirt road.

With my insurance money, I bought a 2005 Toyota Camry, which was smashed only six months after I bought it by a big red truck that had shot-bottles flying out of its windows.

I was seriously considering moving to a city with more public transportation.

However, I soon remembered that I had already been accepted to UNK - I was too lazy to try to transfer again, so I started looking for a new car.


I looked through ads in the Grand Island Independent, the Kearney Hub, and several small town newspapers, but I really wanted another Camry and I couldn't find one that was just right and in my price range.

That's when my boyfriend suggested that I should look on eBay.

I laughed it off at first, but he went straight to the computer and pulled up the eBay Motors page and started searching for Camrys.

I still thought he was crazy, so I sat on the couch and watched T.V. for a while. About an hour and a half later he called me over to the computer. He said that all the Camrys he saw were priced at more than they were worth, but he had found a tricked out Honda Accord that no-one had bid on yet.

One little giggle slipped and in seconds I was rolling around on the floor holding my stomach and laughing. He wasn't impressed.

I felt bad for laughing at him because he thought I could get a really good deal on this car as long as I was logged on to eBay for the last few minutes of the auction to outbid anyone else who wanted the car. He convinced me to look it over, I printed out a Carfax report and the car sounded like a dream - it had a mile-long list of features, only one previous owner, and if I picked it up myself, I wouldn't have to pay $500.00 to have it delivered from St. Louis, MO.

I had just graduated from Central Community College the day after that drunk driver smashed my Camry, so I was ready to start my summer vacation. The eBay auction for the Accord was closing the next day, so I made my opening bid. I was pumped for a road trip.

I got on eBay the next day about an hour before the auction closed and I noticed that there was one other bid. I spent some time checking my various email accounts, but I kept my eye on the clock.

At five minutes till closing time, I raised my bid. Less than 30 seconds later, the other guy raised his. The bidding war went back and forth and back and forth, but I got smart in the last few seconds - the other bidder had upped the bid at five seconds till closing time. I typed in my new bid, but I waited four agonizing seconds and posted my final bid in the last second.

I won the car! Too bad I still had to pay for it.

I felt physically ill when I logged into my Paypal account and authorized the removal of so many thousands of dollars. Fortunately, I had been saving all semester so I could go somewhere for summer vacation and St. Louis happens to be on my way from Nebraska to North Carolina.

Thanks to the car I bought on eBay, my boyfriend and I were about to plan our first road trip together...