by Bethaney Wallace

A few weeks ago I was in need of a very specific type of charger. My MP3 player had gone dead, and quite frankly, I wasn’t willing to spend more cash on a replacement cord than the actual player was worth. Nor did I feel good about backtracking my steps for the past week to find where it’d ended up – somewhere the charger cord, all my loner socks, four pairs of sunglasses, and Lady Gaga’s collection of cardigans are all happily misplaced. I like to think it’s the same place old keys and couch change gather as well.

But rather than the aforementioned cord selections, I decided to choose secret option number three: buying one on the net. Three days and $4 later, I was once again holding a fully charged music-playing device.

“Oh I’ve got that,” says the Internet

Just years ago, the preferred method for finding out-of-the-ordinary items was either in-person, or through the newspaper’s ad space. Pawnshops and secondhand stores brought in all sorts of weird crap, and purchasing it meant being the first to see and pay for said item.

Even harder was proving one’s point during a disagreement. Facts had to be looked up in encyclopedias, arrest reports were archived in libraries, and “check this out” was merely “you’ll never guess what I saw.”

But now unique shopping and random fact searching is at a whole new level. For example, this one-of-a-kind Hot Wheel could only be found online. Custom made from an old Charlie Brown-themed model, it was hand painted, skillfully put into place by a Hot Wheels aficionado, and now contains something the original covered wagons never would have dreamed of – a souped-up engine.

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