Halfway, Oregon --- more than halfway along the highway 86 from Baker, Oregon to Hells Canyon National Recreation Area --- has sold a sign from it’s recent past for $1,000 on eBay.
The buyer: Josh Kopelman, the man who convinced the town of 350 people to change its name to half.com for year. He won out over 45 other bids.
Kopelman, who founded half.com, could obviously afford the memento. He sold his company to eBay in mid 2000 for some $350 million, according to an Associated Press report published in The Argus Observer on Monday, Sept. 24, 2007.
In exchange for changing its identity to “half.com Oregon, America’s first Dot.com city” on Jan. 19, 2000, the town received $100,000 in cash and school computers. And it found itself on NBC’s Today show the day of the changeover.
The town’s two signs from that year lasted well beyond the deal, and beyond the dot com bust, but were finally taken down so that one could be placed in the town museum and the other sold on eBay. According to the Associated Press, Halfway Mayor Gordon Kaesemeyer, allowed that townsfolk “would have been tickled” if the auction had brought in an extra $50 for the town coffers.
For the full Associated Press account, follow our link to the local pages of Monday’s Argus Observer
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