Hoping to lead by example, eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) has become the active trader it hopes its marketplace users become.

It's only Tuesday, and this week has already seen eBay return social bookmarking site StumbleUpon to its founders and reportedly acquire a significant stake in South Korea's Gmarket (NASDAQ:GMKT).

Tack on the weekend report out of The New York Times claiming that Skype's founders are in talks with private equity firms to buy back the popular voice chat platform, and you have eBay in a trading frenzy.

Is this a company or a frenetic fantasy football league player, wheeling and dealing before the trading deadline?

eBay paid $75 million to acquire StumbleUpon two years ago, so letting it go would barely be a flesh wound for a company that oozes cash flow like eBay consistently does. Skype, on the other hand, cost eBay billions. And even though StumbleUpon's growth may have stalled in eBay's hands, Skype continues to broaden its global footprint.

Sure, eBay may have overpaid for Skype, but it certainly doesn't have to give it away. This isn't a bidding war that needs to limit itself to the site's birth parents.

Wouldn't Skype look good at Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), as it's in the process of rolling out Google Voice? And if anything makes Google stronger, doesn't that make Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) natural bidders to keep it away from Big G? Along with Time Warner's (NYSE:TWX) AOL, they all have popular instant messaging platforms.

Even a telco giant may find a threat like Skype to be a better fit in its portfolio, though you can probably cross out smaller telephony players like Vonage (NYSE:VG) that can't muster the strength to lift up a bidding card.

Either way, it seems as if eBay is having its own garage sale. Beyond PayPal, is there really any eBay property that isn't touchable?       

More items in the eBay bid basket: