TORONTO — What's one of Google's new, invitation-only e-mail accounts worth? A pet monkey, a postcard or a mixed tape, according to users posting to a new Internet site, gmailswap.com.

Since the service hasn't even launched yet, it isn't easy to get an account with Gmail, the new web-based e-mail service being developed by the company that so revolutionized the Internet that its name has become a verb.

But a new website allows would-be users to offer items in trade for one of the few thousand exclusive preview accounts that have been available to select invitees since early last month.

"I had been listening to friends, seeing people going on and on about this and seeing how desperate they were for accounts," said Sean Michaels, 22, from his Ottawa home.

"I thought there's got to be a way to connect these people out there who have invitations with the people who want them."

There's a gold-rush style frenzy of people who want to stake their claim to something Michaels predicts will become the new standard in web mail accounts and will replace other services like Hotmail and Yahoo.

Since announcing plans for the service, Google has already received more than a million requests for accounts, a company spokesman said. And people have been snapping up accounts that others are selling via the auction website e-bay, with some shelling out more than $100 to get one of the accounts.

All of this despite the fact that when Google eventually launches the service, it will be free.

"Just like it's cool to have a good Hotmail address, it would be cool to have a good Gmail address - if that's what the standard is going to be for everybody," Michaels said.

There are still plenty of addresses available on those other free services, but the obvious ones - goldilockshotmail.com or supermanyahoo.com - were snapped up long ago.

And the cachet of being among the first to lay claim to an easy-to-remember Gmail address is driving up the barter on Michaels' site, which topped 150 offers - including a week's free stay at a Maui beach house - after just a few hours and prompted a ripple of discussion across the Internet.

"It's fascinating to see what people are willing to offer and the different variety of things. There's character to the swaps, which is really cool," said Michaels, who picked up the catchy "gramophone" moniker when he scored an invitation a few weeks ago.

Early users who have managed to score an invitation to the hottest party on the Web are raving about it.

"Besides being huge, it's searchable, easy to handle and it feels like it's actually developed by people who use e-mail," Edmonton native Andrew Comrie-Picard, 32, said from New York City, where he's an entertainment lawyer.

With his invitation to Gmail from a friend who works at Google, he claimed "musketeer," the name of his performance rally car-racing team. He said his friends - the ones with tech-geek predilections, at least - are covetous.

"It feels great to be on the vanguard," he said. "I had a really hard time deciding what name to use, because I knew I'd have basically one crack to have early access."

Michaels, who has just graduated from McGill University and is living at home with his parents for the summer, says he's not surprised that people are keen on his idea given the popularity of Google.

"Everybody loves Google ... people just have a warm fuzzy respect for the company."

Access to this exclusive club of free accounts with cool usernames and a gig of free e-mail storage is currently numbered at only a few thousand, a tiny fraction of the users the company predicts it will have when the service is up and running.

A Google spokesman declined to comment on when the floodgates will finally open to everybody else.