Yes, but is it ART?
Just about everything can be considered art, which sort of reminds me of a Balinese saying from at least a generation ago:
We have no art. We do everything as well as we can.
Whether or not that statement is accurate doesn't really matter - it's become common knowledge, if not folklore, as a comment, by default, on western culture. For me I'll let it help me focus on the question of whether buying and selling on eBay can be considered an art form. One artist with whom I have a personal connection has an ongoing project which seeks to give expression to the idea. As he puts it on his site:
Each sale, each presentation of something to buy, each bid on a desired object, is like wafting an offering on the wind: it goes out, with sincerety, hope, desire and fear to blow who knows where, and to who knows what end. Like Tibetan prayer flags the offerings wave in the digital breeze for awhile and are gone. Some 'prayers' end without reward, others with less or more than anticipated. Nonetheless it is sent, again and again, in faith and trust. For these prayers, however, this trust and their efficacy are measureable...
Someone else, John Freyer, whom I know of only through his site, has used eBay to free himself of all his earthly belongings. To my dismay I came across this site slightly after the last item put up for auction sold - I would have been happy to have become part of the project by buying something for which I probably had no use but with which I wouldn't be able to part. But even if I didn't get a chance to actually become part of the project (there seems to be something purposefully artistic about it, but I'm not sure) I've continued to enjoy reading the reports that grace the site as the artist travels across the States and visits the items he's sold.
There are others. Along similar lines, for instance, Michael Mandiberg is not only selling all of his possessions through his own web site, he's also offering his time for sale. Since we are what we own, Mandiberg subtitles his project "dismantling my identity". On the site we learn that among the items he has sold on his site is an object he bought from John Freyer's site. Mandiberg sold the item (actually a group of small items) for $50. I don't know whether he turned a profit. I also don't know whether the new purchaser has advertised it for sale on his or her own web site, but it would be interesting to follow the ongoing sale of a object that continually adds to and detracts from someone's identity simply through an ongoing chain of purchases.
Go to: The Boidem goes shopping.