In February 2001, I became daviddanielscom on eBay, joining a digital marketplace buzzing with collectors and tech fans. That same year, I launched DavidDaniels.com, my space for tech and creative pursuits. The internet was raw—Napster fueled music debates, Wikipedia was a new wiki, and Google was rising. As daviddanielscom, I began a 24-year eBay journey, offloading older Apple gear I’d outgrown, earning a modest but proud feedback rating of 109 over 20 years.

It’s a weird username, daviddanielscom, because eBay does not allow you to use any wording that will take you out of the ebay site. The username, daviddanielsdotcom, did not pass the snuff test but daviddanielscom did so that has been my username ever since.

My eBay saga is all about Apple classics. I sold PowerBooks, MacBooks, and standout items like an iPhone 3, an iPhone 4, and a Motorola Razr with iTunes—a pre-iPhone relic that sparked nostalgia. Each sale connected me to buyers who cherished these tech gems. My feedback grew slowly but steadily, reflecting trust built one package at a time.

About the only things I did not sell were my iMacs…

This was the first generation of the Mac mini, released by Apple on January 11, 2005, during Steve Jobs’ keynote at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco. It began shipping shortly after, on January 29, 2005. This is the oldest Mac I still have in my possession and could not part with it. It still works and I could upgrade it even further with an upgraded intel chip and then make it a hackintosh by installing the drivers that are needed to load the latest operating system. Unfortunately the hardware on this system will never run like the modern Macs of today so I keep it around to remind me of the old days of the internet.
This is the classic iMac that I used through the 2020 pandemic. This is an early 2014 model. This one I may not part with either. This model could run the latest operating system with some help from developers on Github using Opencore Legacy Patcher. Ultimately, constantly upgrading drivers was a hassle so I opted for a newer system running an M4 chip. This classic may remain in my possession for a while too since it has such a classic design.

And along the way I chose to keep my the first iPad mini that I acquired back in 2012 along with an iPod nano from the same year. They still get some use, especially the nano which can be used to listen to music without any interruptions from phone calls, texts and other miscellaneous notifications.

Napster, Wikipedia, YouTube (2005), Twitter (2006), iPhone (2007), Instagram (2010), Bitcoin (2013), TikTok (2016), Zoom (2020), ChatGPT (2022), X (2024) all defined new eras, but eBay remained my hub for passing retro tech to collectors. By 2024, AI like ChatGPT and Grok reshaped the web, and eBay’s tools kept my listings sharp.

Today, in 2025, I’m still daviddanielscom, with 24 years of stories and a small feedback score of 109. eBay taught me trust and the joy of giving old tech new homes. From dial-up to AI, my journey echoes the internet’s wild ride. What retro tech do you love? Share below!

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