eBay trivia

2008-06-18T09:40:58-06:00

Some expensive items sold on eBay

A 340-year-old copy of Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre, which survived the Great Fire of London in 1666 (£5million)
Grumman Gulfstream II jet ($4.9 million)
1909 Honus Wagner baseball card ($1.65 million)
Diamond Lake Resort, western Kentucky ($1.2 million)
Enzo Ferrari ($975,000, October 2004)[1]
Shoeless Joe Jackson's "Black Betsy" baseball bat ($577,610)
Round of golf with Tiger Woods ($425,000)
Actual portions of the 1996-2001 Jeopardy! set, including the 9-foot-high Jeopardy! logo that was etched in glass as the backdrop. That sold for approximately $100,000 and one of the contestant podiums sold for nearly $10,000 (proceeds of the set's sale went to charity)

Largest item

One of the largest items ever sold was a World War II submarine, sold by a small town in New England that decided it did not need the historical relic anymore.

Largest failed auction

One of the largest items ever to be put up to auction and not sold was a decommissioned aircraft carrier. The auction was placed by an anonymous seller from Brazil on eBay Motors.

Unusual sale items

In June 2005, Karolyne Smith sold the right to permanently tattoo an ad on her forehead to GoldenPalace.com for $10,000.
In May 2005, a Volkswagen Golf that had previously been registered to Cardinal Josef Ratzinger (who had been elected Pope Benedict XVI the previous month) was sold on eBay's German site for €188,938.88. The winning bid was made by the GoldenPalace.com online casino, known for their outrageous eBay purchases. [2]
In 2004, a Seattle man posted pictures of himself wearing his ex-wife's wedding dress. In more than one way, the seller received much more than he expected. While he initially admitted he was selling the dress to earn some money for Mariners tickets, the bidding got into the thousands of dollars, and the seller actually had received a number of marriage proposals from viewers.
In September 2004, the owner of MagicGoat.com sold the contents of his trash can to a middle school language arts teacher, who had her students write essays about the trash. [3]
There was at one point an auction for the first ride on Kingda Ka, the tallest roller coaster on Earth. The winning bid was $1691.66, and the winner rode in the front seat. [4]
On November 23, 2004, a grilled cheese sandwich with a likeness of the Virgin Mary on it sold for $28,000 to the online casino GoldenPalace.com. The seller claimed to see the Virgin Mary toasted into the bread when she made the sandwitch in 1994. She promptly sealed it in a plastic bag where it remained, free of mold, for over 10 years until it's sale on eBay.
A Sydney man pocketed AUS$1,035 after auctioning a piece of Nutri-Grain resembling ET, in Dec 2004.
A 50,000-year-old mammoth. With a minimum bid set at US $250,000. Max was put up for sale in 2004 by his Dutch owner due to lack of space and sold for £61,000. A bargain considering he was one of the five best and most complete mammoth skeletons in the world, consisting of 90% of his original bone material.
The owner of Cockeyed.com sold advertising space comprising a single pixel on its homepage for 21 days for $100 [5].
An incomplete package of diapers, bought and opened in the 1980s, raised more than $700US for the Children and Families Ministry at a United Church in Victoria, British Columbia (Canada).
Water that was said to have been left in a cup Elvis Presley once drank from was sold for $455. The few tablespoons came from a plastic cup Presley sipped at a concert in North Carolina in 1977. [6]
A Coventry University student got £1.20p for a single cornflake. [7]
For $100, a man said that he would take a pair of jean his girlfriend made, and shoot them, and drag them behing his tractor, with a fee per shot/starting up the tractor. The item failed to sell. [8]
an European buyer sold an Vauxhall VX220 that was said to be baptized. [9]

Prohibited items

eBay in its earliest days was essentially unregulated. But as eBay grew, it found it necessary to restrict or forbid auctions for various items. Among the hundred or so banned categories (note that these relate to ebay.com (the US site), other regions may vary in their rules) :

Tobacco (tobacco-related items and collectibles are allowed) [10]
Alcohol (alcohol-related collectibles, including sealed containers, as well as wine sales by licensed sellers are allowed) [11]
Nazi paraphernalia [12]
Bootleg recordings [13]
Firearms and ammunition [14]
Dirty used clothing [15] This policy arose because a thriving market in used jock-straps and underwear had emerged on ebay. Sellers would post descriptions specifically emphasising that they had worn these undergarments for days, a week or more, especially during exercise. There was a demand for this kind of garment amongst sexual fetishists, and these garments would often fetch hundreds of dollars.
Human parts and remains [16]

As well as a long list of other items that are either wholly prohibited or restricted in some manner. [17]