AC Dickson's Guide To Ebay Powerselling

AC Dickson is a winner. You can tell. Just look at the picture on the cover – power stance, “Blue Steel” eyes, red polyester pants, a tie that makes no sense whatsoever…. Wait, where was I? Oh, yeah, AC Dickson is a winner. What made him a winner? Ebay. And guess what else? He’s willing to share his ebay expertise to lift us common saps up to his level. What a guy.

Okay, truth be told, there is no AC Dickson. “AC” is the alter ego of Andrew Dickson, and this zine is the print companion to a similarly demented faux infommercial DVD/VHS he made touting the curative properties of ebay on the human psyche. And yet, for all of the gonzo laughs implicit in the “AC Dickson” character, the Guide to Ebay Powerselling is quite an insightful look into the mechanics of being an ebay vendor, before then morphing into a much more ambitious (and almost philosophical) look into the implications ebay has for our economy and our capitalist society. Though it also includes tales of some of the more interesting ebay scams– the Drunken Sailor, the imaginary girlfriend (What, no Haunted Doll?)– so it’s not all heavy theorizing.

Guide to Ebay Powerselling is exactly the kind of quirky yet informative writing that could only exist in a zine. Proper magazines wouldn’t give Dickson the word count necessary, a blog post this long would never be linked by Metafilter, and Twitter? Forget it.

Bonus material includes an ebay timeline, guide to seller’s slang, and a glossary.

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