Top eBay Town in America is in South Jersey

I thought this is as better time than any to start blogging about South Jersey...
and why not start with my South Jersey town.
This week was a banner week for the South Jersey town that I live in called Lumberton, NJ.

Ebay determined that Lumberton, New Jersey has more buying and selling activity on a per-capita basis
than any other town in the United States of America...and they threw us a big party on Tuesday Night May
15th to thank us.

Here's the story.

The town has approximately 12,000 people in it and that number includes mothers, fathers, children and grandmothers. Out of that 12,000 about 3000 are eBay members.
So 1/4th of the town is on Ebay.

No. I'm not joking.

Wow! Is what my husband and I said when we heard that...and then we thought about it. We are on ebay, our neighbors are on ebay, teachers are on ebay, students are on ebay and the local businesses are on ebay....hey this could be true.

It was.

Here are more articles about the ebay Phenomenon here in Lumberton, NJ.

Lumberton.com - http://www.lumberton.com/local_news.php
and
Burlington County Times, by Jason Harris -
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/147-05162007-1347508.html

Anyway, we got our totally-terrific babysitter down the street to look after the kids and headed down to the Ebay party this week that was held for the town to thank us
for being truly the super-duper patrons of their service.

Here are a few pics:

My son on Ebay Day.

The RVRHS Band that came to play.

(l-r) - Local Lady, Postmaster of Lumberton K.P., Mayor of Lumberton, Gary, Jim

$10,000 donation to Burlington County Animal Alliance

Information Tents during eBay Celebration

Ebay, who is based in California held a competition in 2006 to see which zip code generated the most traffic over a 3 week period and users would collect points if they sold or bought something on eBay, posted messages on their message boards, or donated to charities through the ebay website (did you know you could even do that...I know now I could).

Lumberton, NJ 08048 collected points, points, points... the most points. Over 230,000 points. 2nd place was Nashville with 16,000 points.

How did we get those many points?...Well, let me put this further into perspective. During the celebration Jim Griff, the ebay big-wig in marketing said that during the month of November 2006 over 40,000 items were for sale by people from our town.

He jokingly said at one point..."Don't you guys do anything else?"

My friend leaned over and whispered to me, "Yeah...we are really good at cleaning up after major floods too."...(that's another blog story for another day)

So with those many points ebay said that Lumberton could chose a local charity to donate to and at the end of the day The Burlington County Animal Alliance was the chosen one. On Tuesday it received a $10,000 donation from eBay.

Pat K. who has worked month after month for years with the BCAA, and an old friend of mine who I used to work with at my previous life at McGraw-Hill came by my table to talk with me. She was so happy that the BCAA was chosen and she couldn't say enough about how generous a donation it was. Knowing a few people in the Animal rescue and support groups in the Camden and Burlington County area and hearing the stories from year to year...I heartily agree it was a good cause. People like Pat can spend more time taking care of the animals than spending their valuable time fundraising.

Anyway, back to the party:

Lumberton was given a wonderful party on the Village Green with boxed turkey, tuna, and vegetarian meals, drinks, and music. The music was from the dynamic and really wonderful student musicians at the Rancocas Valley Regional Highschool, which is the highschool that our Lumberton township students feed into.

The horn section was amazing and it was a really great idea to get them to come.
It added a touch of local flavor and many people knew the young men in the band. Nicola, Your son and his friends were great!

The current Mayor of Lumberton, NJ, Patrick Delany was also there.
The mayor also sells items on ebay.

He said a few words to the crowd and then thanked ebay for coming to town. He then presented Gary Briggs, Chief Marketing Officer at eBAy, a laminated, color, 8 1/2 by 11 inch SMART-CARD to the City with Brigg's face and name on it...instead of the traditional "Key to the City".

Which I thought was really funny and Great! Why? Because I looked around when he said it and saw that not only did Briggs get it, the younger people in the crowd got it, and the slightly 30+ people at my table got it, but also the seniors in the crowd got it. I said to myself...Yeah..we definitely are a plugged in-computer geek community.

My friends said that they were talking with two older people at the table before we arrived and that they had sold two cars on eBay this past year.

My neighbors sell clothes, books, and electronics, and more

The local businesses sell art, comic books, furniture, collectibles, and much, much more.

As I end this blog spot I just want to say that this town that I live in is not only about eBayers. That is just a small part of the picture really of who we are. Lumberton, NJ is also about families and education and business and friendship.