Would you buy stock in Etsy? You already can...

...if you can afford it. Etsy is a private company, which means it has not issued stock publicly for anyone to buy. Etsy stock is held privately by the founders, employees and investors.

In recent years, a secondary market has arisen to "buy and sell" this private stock. Owners of the private stock make an agreement to sell their shares to a buyer once the company goes public. Not surprisingly, Facebook makes up a big chunk of this secondary trading. One company that facilitates this trading, Second Market, reported that Facebook made up 39% of the trades through their service, the highest single source. LinkedIn was second at 7% of trades.

Etsy was the third most traded private company at 5% of trades.

Second Market quarterly report (pdf)