This column appeared in the Arizona Daily Sun on Jan. 22, 2003.

A high-tech way to land Super Bowl tickets

By Ed Odeven

Welcome to the modern world of commerce. Nowadays, you don’t have to hold up a cardboard sign proclaiming, “I want Super Bowl tickets.” In this age of high-tech computers and instant information, there’s another way to buy that hard-to-get item, even seats at the 50-yard line.

E-commerce, or what I like to call e-bazaars, enables consumers to purchase bizarre and popular merchandise (yep, there might even be unreleased Milli Vanilli bootleg tapes out there somewhere).

Indeed eBay is at the forefront of this innovative, capitalistic approach. On any given day, eBay, considered the world’s No. 1 online marketplace, has approximately 12 millions items available, including 1.7 million new listings, says Kevin Pursglove, an eBay spokesman.

“What’s interesting from our standpoint is how eBay has become almost a…