High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Hobby Markets Online was an early internet auction company and which ran a series of person-to-person marketplaces for high-end collectibles. The Company is cited as the second person-to-person online auction marketplace after eBay and launched its first web-based auction on October 15, 1995, several weeks after eBay had launched its first auction on September 12, 1995. Both of these auction websites were launched in the San Francisco Bay Area although the respective founders did not know about each other or their websites at the time.