Agree it was black market and gauche, but it was always advertised to you indirectly as soon as you signed on to battle.net

Every 3rd message in the public chat was either an eBay SoJ seller or people buying/selling based on SoJs.

Perhaps I’m wrong, but the prevalence of all of that had me believing at the time that anyone with a complete decent 5 piece set had just paid for it.