Instagram: @EBayBae
Founder: Tae In Ahn
Current location: New York, New York
Day job: Ahn is a collections specialist at The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She designs and creates custom storage mounts and boxes for permanent collections.
Followers: About 9,800
Notable fans: The beloved archivist Gabriel Held (@gabriel_held_vintage); the label Palomo Spain (@palomospain); and model Paul Hameline (@paulhameline).
The gist: EBayBae serves up the most bizarre items found on the EBay. For those who love the noughties, this is your haven: It’s a treasure trove for all things excessive and monogrammed, like Gucci slides with Donald Duck’s face on them (accompanied by the description “quack quack”); an “adiorable” Dior saddle bag; and Chanel ankle bracelet bags (remember those?). Then there are the occasional “oddball” listings, like a collection of prescription pill bottles, 200-plus pig figures, and a bubble tent for camping. To each their own.
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So, how does Ahn find this stuff? Like most of us, Ahn—a proud EBayer since 2003—does a lot of digital K-holing. “Sometimes I will purposefully search for something I’m inspired by at the moment, such as a specific category, time period, designer, object, or word,” says Ahn. “Sometimes I’ll start a vague search and then refine it, leading me to various rabbit holes and finding something completely unexpected.”
Like a museum, Ahn plays with themes: Ahn’s 9-to-5 at the Met is certainly reflected in her Instagram account. Though at first it seems random, the feed is cheekily curated. For example, she has focused on pet accessories, like a bite-size “Chewy Vuitton” Murakami-style fur chew-toy purse, a Dolce Gabbana bedazzled collar, and even a custom-built cedar dog house. On a different week, Ahn might shift her focus to all things Vivienne Westwood: metallic animal-toe heels (size 9!), a portrait corset, and, yes, a life-size—or mini-size!—cardboard cutout of the designer. Most recently, she’s zeroed in on grass. Among the listings is a Prada tote bag made from green raffia, a garden maze dress by Mary Katrantzou, and a box of plastic kale and cucumber rose garnishes. Ahn is interested in a wide range of objets. “Wholesale lots, good design, bad design, luxury brands, utilitarian things, midcentury design, plastic of all sorts,” she says. “Things that are novel yet relevant.”
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There’s even a fetish category: Sure, it’s not for everyone, but Ahn has found listings for pre-owned socks (for label lovers, they’re Reebok and Adidas). More items in that vein include cashmere, mohair, and goat-fur briefs and a suggestive leopard-print spandex costume suit.
Her most famous find: “I vaguely remember one of the first posts that got a mass swarm of likes was a pair of Marc Jacobs Mary Jane heels that Brittany Murphy wore on the set of Uptown Girls,” she says.
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Her craziest: “Ham and cheese fragrance oil, the world’s longest paper receipt from a store buyout performance art piece, Louis Vuitton boxing gloves,” she writes, “and someone offering to get a tattoo of a business logo for $10,000.”
Fun fact: There’s food, too. An actual banana listed at $1,000 has made a cameo on the account, as have a fresh-cooked hot dog and a nativity scene acted out by Cheetos.