The Internet is now filled with classified advertisements from small companies - many of them here in China - auctioning for real money their powerful figures, called avatars.
His company, a custom-computer store called Bear Solutions in Houston, was auctioning a fully loaded computer with a 500-MHz chip.
Last week, his company auctioned several sites for an average of 35 percent more than the already high prevailing prices.
When the auction first began in 1978, the company auctioned $100 million of 91-day paper every Tuesday, accounting for 1.5 percent of its total financing.
The company auctioned the last of its assets at company headquarters.
Many smaller companies have auctioned domain names for years.
Last week the company auctioned a philatelic collector's item: a 24-cent stamp from 1918 with an inverted image of an airplane.
By October 2011, the company was auctioning £600,000 of invoices a month.
But in a notable departure the company auctioned the collection of Buffalo Bob Smith, including an original Howdy Doody puppet that sold for more than $113,000.
