In recent weeks, a logo-emblazoned cord that eToys employees wore around their necks to display company IDs sold online for $21.50. A single business card from WebVan fetched $3.02 plus shipping, and a copy of its first annual report, sent to every shareholder for free, went for $26.26. The peak price paid so far for a bright orange Kozmo.com messenger bag? $187.50.
Since the Internet bubble burst last spring, day-trading may be out, but buying and selling the artifacts of the dot-com companies that soared and then crashed are suddenly in.
Collectors are paying rapidly rising prices for a wide range of items bearing the names of high-profile Internet failures like Kozmo.com, WebVan, Pets.com, eToys, and others. The buyers apparently believe the stuff may be worth big money one day, the same kind of sunny speculation that fueled the dot-com craze.
"It's a bubble on the bubble," said Rudy Franchi, owner of the Nostalgia Factory in the North End and a collectibles consultant for "Antiques Roadshow," the PBS program. And this one will burst too, he predicted, because few dot-com companies ever established highly recognizable names. "In five years, people won't even know what a Kozmo was," Franchi said.
Kozmo.com was an online service based in New York that promised to deliver everything from potato chips to cough medicine in less than an hour. It had a following, especially among college students, but like many of its dot-com brethren it could not make enough money to assure long-term survival.
Yet its quick rise and fall hasn't stopped a brisk business in Kozmo.com paraphernalia on eBay, the online auction site that has become a clearinghouse for all manner of dot-com items.
"I think this is very similar to promotional stuff from the early days of radio and TV," said Paul Royka, a former auctioneer and founder of AppraisalDay.com, a Lunenburg company that offers online appraisals. "The objects are kind of fun. They're very visual, and they have a social-historical aspect to them that relates to a certain period of time in world history. All that will make them valuable and collectible."
Some believe the "greater fool" theory that marked the Internet stock runup may be in effect again, with buyers of dot-com memorabilia hoping to create a hot market that will entice others to pay even more for the items.
But while the beneficiaries of the dot-com IPO era were often venture capitalists and investment bankers, the collectibles trend has a more democratic tilt to it. Often, the sellers are former employees or shareholders of the bankrupt dot-coms simply trying to dull the pain of their financial setbacks.
"A lot of these people are trying to recoup their losses in the stock market, or they're employees who don't feel they're going to get their last paycheck," said Andrew Hoang, a network security engineer in Seattle.
Hoang is a former shareholder in Webvan, an ambitious online grocery service based in California that recently shut down. He sold the company's 2000 annual report on eBay and plans to list his stock certificates soon, as other investors have done, in hopes of generating a new kind of paper wealth. (A Webvan certificate sold last week on eBay for $530.)
A former WebVan courier who gave his name only as Warren says he is doing a brisk business in items he collected while working for the company, like a "Safe Driver 2000" lapel pin, which he sold recently for $4.
"I can turn some dead dot-com stuff into a nice severance that we never got," he said in an interview conducted by e-mail. "As time passes, the demand and the value [of WebVan items] will decrease as more people flood the market. I believe in positive cash flow at the most practical time."
Tom Parker, the president of African Northwest, a pet supply company in Seattle, says he is surprised that prices continue to rise. Parker purchased some inventory from Pets.com after the company declared bankruptcy. While he was expecting to get only pet supplies like leashes, he also received boxes with dozens of keychains, coffee mugs, and briefcases, all bearing either the Pets.com logo or an image of its popular "Sock Puppet" mascot.
"I thought prices would drop the longer they've been out of business," Parker said. "But last week, prices were the highest on average that they've been. We're selling picture frames and coffee mugs with the Sock Puppet on them for $40."
Parker adds that the logo merchandise he has sold on eBay has proven much more profitable than the aquarium heaters and other traditional inventory he sells to traditional retailers like Petco. But he worries about what might happen if too much paraphernalia saturates eBay, just as too many initial public offerings hurt high-tech stocks in 1999 and 2000.
"I'm just letting a few [items] out at a time," Parker said. "There's no point in dumping them."
While some buyers clearly believe that relics from the days of the wild, wild Web can only increase in value, others say they have no interest in reselling items to make a profit.
MIT graduate student Andrew Sudbury paid $36.87 on eBay for a pair of blue heavy-duty pants once used by Kozmo.com's delivery personnel and $51.25 for a fleece-lined Kozmo parka. He says he'll wear the gear on winter bike rides to school and that the clothes will serve as a reminder of the fleeting dot-com era.
"It is humorous, given all the huge wealth transfers that occurred, where it all went," Sudbury said in an an e-mail. "I'm at business school now, so it is extra funny."
Very few items emblazoned with logos of defunct Massachusetts dot-coms have shown up on eBay. The site lists no current or past auctions for merchandise from local former online retailers like Furniture.com, MotherNature.com, HomeRuns.com, or iCast -- CMGI's attempt to launch an entertainment portal.
Bill Golden, a former iCast employee, theorizes that some Massachusetts start-ups may have been lesser-known than their Silicon Valley counterparts or produced fewer promotional giveaways. But he also says that the dot-com employees he knows have held on to their memorabilia for sentimental reasons. Golden still uses an iCast messenger bag daily.
Will Weddleton, once the general manager for Kozmo.com's Boston operation, says his son keeps one of the company's old drop-boxes, used to collect videos that customers returned, as a safe in his bedroom.
Would Weddleton ever consider listing the drop-box on eBay?
No way, he says. "I think I'll keep it in the family as an heirloom. I want some stuff to show my grandchildren, to prove that I was there."