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The Loins of eBay Are Fruitful
by acdickson
Years from now historians will look back on the winter and spring of 2005 as the glory days of eBay creativity. We have Golden Palace Casino largely to thank, I'd argue they're an NPR segment away from being a household word. But let's also not forget that for GPC to bid, there have to be auctions that capture the collective imagination and best raunchy jokes as the penultimate email topic to be forwarded to distant relatives and fellow office workers.
Let me walk you through a few.
While the "I'll put your corporate logo on your body" auction has been devalued from $37,000 for the first forehead, to $9000 for the first pregnant belly, to about $2 for a given body part today, two recent college grads came up with a very inspired logo infested bike ride from New Hampshire to Miami. They got a bid of $8000 plus dollars from GPC, shy of what I would suspect was a $10,000 reserve bid. Nice work gents, putting a new spin on an old auction is a sound way to go, but I wonder if you regret putting the reserve so high. $4000 apiece to go on a coastal bike ride seems like easy money to me.
One of the most legendary and heartwarming auctions in history was the haunted ghost cane. Some loving parents, attempting to quell the fears of their child, put grandpa's supposedly haunted walking stick on eBay. Grade A parenting, sort of how a children's book might suggest to deal with a child's fear, openly and publicly with a fun disposal strategy. Much to their surprise and no doubt delight, GPC bid that cane to over $70,000. Wow. Even though the cane sold months before the $37,000 forehead billboard, the haunted item copy cat auctions are in still in their relative infancy. This haunted Nintendo game system is up to $220 with (as I write this) 8 hours to go.
Cut from the same cloth as the original haunted walking stick comes another great auction found and forwarded to me by Urban Honking kingpin Mike Merrill, 10 children's drawings of robots. Now, with over 4000 hits already and 5 days to go this might very well be the auction of the week that GPC will surely buy. I'm curious if the auctioneers are genuinely selling this as an ego boost to their budding Picasso, or if they are preying on his emerging talent for their own hollow financial gain. If the latter, Macauley Culkin surely feels this youngsters pain.
Finally, there is the wink wink nudge nudge clever genre of auction. Is it art? Is it the work of a very bored office worker? Both? This time machine is a great piece of writing and was rewarded by over $600 from... who else? Golden Palace Casino.
Stay tuned eBay fans. I'm working on my own concept auction with the winner of my call to arms to grab GPC's attention and their wallet.
