Big Deep Questions: What’s the weirdest thing you ever bought or sold on eBay?
Tell us all about it. And if you’re able and inclined to send a picture of it, please do: steve [at] dailymole [dot] com.13 Responses to “Big Deep Questions: What’s the weirdest thing you ever bought or sold on eBay?”
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In March 2004, on the first anniversary of the Iraq War, I tried to sell Iraq’s WMDs. The auction was clearly a parody, though I evidently crossed the line by (a) swearing, and (b) selling something that didn’t actually exist.
Long story short, after some unintended publicity the bidding got up to $27,000 before Ebay yanked the auction and banned me for (apparently) the rest of my life.
Yeah, that beats the hell out of my Fisher Price Printing Press.
A publicity photo of the cast of Tod Browning’s “Freaks.”
It probably could be retitled “GOP 2008 Presidential Candidates,” but that would be an insult to the cast.
A prison letter from serial killer John Wayne Gacy complaining about all the continuity mistakes in a TV movie about him.
He was right; it was a lousy movie.
I was doing opposition research for a political campaign and found that one of the opponents was doing an enormous amount of eBay sales… mostly old stamps and related philatelic items. Out of curiosity I ended up purchasing one for a couple bucks. Instant buyer’s remorse. I ended up putting it with my mother’s old stamp collection which is now in the basement of my house.
A friend of mine in England was also selling an empty aluminum can. As a joke I ended up being the winning bidder for around 75p and instead of paying shipping I told him to recycle it. He wanted to charge me the petrol to take it to the recycling centre and I told him to fuck off.
Uh, do wedding rings count?
Weirdest thing I ever bought? 5 dozen Syringe Pens. They are syringes, with pens in them where the needle normally would - and a colored fluid inside.
OH! I retract that! The weirdest thing was a box with 100 squeezable poopin’ animals! They were small, on key chains, and when you squeezed them a little brown rubbery type sorta-solid came out of a big hole in their butts. Sheep, cows, elephants and monkeys. They were precious.
Can’t believe I forgot about those.
Thanks, Ang. Pooping plastic animals definitely out-weirds wedding rings.
Those plastic pooping animals went through a phase of showing up at every gas station counter on Rice Street. Great fun.
I collect things from communities my family has ties to. Two of my favorite ebay prizes are from Iowa creameries. A third is auto accident postcards. My great-great aunt was the first person killed in a car-train wreck in Iowa, and my siblings and I are always looking for and buying postcards of the car wreck. All of these postcards of people looking at a wrecked car and train — and we collect them.
My hometown of Klemme, Iowa had a creamery that gave away ashtrays as member gifts in the 1950s and 1960s. Here’s the healthy cow who gives us healthy milk, etc. and her face is on the ashtray! There may be one on eBay again as I write this. . .
Then there are the crazed dairy collectors who bid up prices and then send you pleading emails when you throw up your hands, cash in all of your eBay gift certificates and outbid the suckers. Note: Never bid when you’re annoyed.
I spent way too much on a Renwick, Iowa milk bottle (great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents helped found the town and the creamery) I STILL hear from one guy from California who’d probably break in and steal my milk bottle if he knew my address. . .
I know this is a few months late, although I wanted to add. My brother and I once collected a couple hundred snapple lids “cause I had planed on reading them all”. one day we were cleaning and realized it was out of control and decided to sell half of them on ebay. We wanted to see if anyone would actually buy them. not only did someone buy them but he had many bids. when that went over so well we listed the other half and the same guy bought the rest of them.
Yay, thread revival!
I just remembered that I bought about 100 exhaust pipe whistles as a lot and turned around and sold 98 of them as another lot. eBay FTW.
there are now pig key chains with flashing eyes. they make a grunting sound. a friend got me one on. . . eBay!