As many of you have noticed, Ebay has become a little out of control lately. People are selling grilled cheese sandwiches with the likeness of the Virgin Mary for $40,000.00, empty gum wrappers are selling for a few hundred dollars, etc... Well, I decided to get in on the insantiy and make my own absurd auction with a little bit of satire in the mix:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 5589414060

Here's to hoping my auction goes for a few thousand! Please let me know what you think.

LOL! I'm not an ebayer really, but i'd like to see some of these grilled cheese auctions... If you have any of those links post them if you have time please.

This post was in November. So I doubt if they have the link at all but here is the post that I posted on Twisty here.

viewtopic.php?t=3301

I had missed the other thread and the auction is gone so I googled and found this nice page about it:
http://cas.bellarmine.edu/tietjen/RootW ... Cheese.htm
Hmm, Golden Palace Casino, aren't that the same guys who bought the pope's former car?

I'm not sure about that, but I do know they won an auction for a Dorito shaped like the Pope's hat for over $1200.00 US. They are after advertising their casino, and any auction that is popular is the perfect place for that. They aren't bidding on the item itself, they are bidding on the attention the auction brings.

Aside from that, bidders on Ebay will buy anything if the story is worth reading. After all, look at this:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 45837&rd=1

As of this posting, the current bid is $305.00 for an Empty Gum Wrapper. The way I see it, if an empty gum wrapper can bring that kind of money, why not my "AMAZING copper coin"?

Yes they're it. They buy all kinds of strange things, for an overview look here:
http://www.goldenpalaceevents.com/auctions/
Here they pay $15000 if you call your baby "GoldenPalaceDotCom":
http://www.goldenpalaceevents.com/aucti ... amed01.php
And here's another toast they've bought:
http://www.goldenpalaceevents.com/aucti ... oast01.php

And about the "empty gum wrapper" auction: I noticed that a fairly large part of the bidders have "about me" pages and either they don't understand how the "maximum bid" works or they just want to see their name dozens of times. These guys talk about the particular auction:
http://cgi3.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?V ... illweddief
They also link to the website of an ebook (http://www.silentsalesmachine.com/) about making money with ebay, maybe this auction is an idea from the book? And maybe the seller and the bidders are a conspiracy group... and maybe the casino didn't really pay that much for the pope's car because it was all their fake and nobody will ever find out?

Well, in the end my absurd auction didn't do so well. I did have a lot of fun being stupid, but I didn't make any easy money. I'm starting to think Stefan is correct in assuming these people are all part of a conspiracy group. I put in a needless amount of effort to update that auction every day and I didn't get so much as a single question to reply to. I am however suprised that this ridiculous auction of mine brought in more views than several of my serious auctions.