EBay

Trivia

The five most expensive items sold on eBay (as of 2002)

• Grumman Gulfstream II jet ($4.9 million)
• 1909 Honus Wagner baseball card ($1.65 million)
• Diamond Lake Resort, western Kentucky ($1.2 million)
• Shoeless Joe Jackson's "Black Betsy" baseball bat ($577,610)
• Round of golf with Tiger Woods ($425,000)

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.

Related Topics:
World War II - Submarine - New England

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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.

Related Topics:
Aircraft carrier - Brazil

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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 Josef Cardinal Ratzinger (who became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005) 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. http://www.goldenpalaceevents.com/ebay_archives/popemobile02.html
• In January 2004, a man put up a Windows file folder for sale, which was at £10,000,000 when it was ended by eBay officials.
• 18-year-old lesbian Rosie Reid caused controversy when she sold her virginity for £8,400 to a 44-year old London man. A 19-year-old also offered to sell his virginity on the website.
• In 2004, a Seattle man posted pictures of himself wearing his ex-wife's wedding dress. While he initially admitted he was selling the dress to earn some money for Mariners tickets, the bidding got into the thousands of dollars.
• 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. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6523923733&category=16071&sspagename=rvi:1:1v_home
• 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 the homepage for 21 days for $100 http://www.cockeyed.com/ebay/pixel/real_pixel.html.

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) :

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• Tobacco (tobacco-related items and collectibles are allowed) http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/tobacco.html
• Nazi paraphernalia http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/offensive.html
• Bootleg recordings http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/bootlegs.html
• "Reflectoporn" -- the practice of listing items on eBay with reflections of the nude seller
• Firearms and ammunition http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/firearms-weapons-knives.html
• Dirty used clothing http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/used-clothing.html
• Human parts and remains http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/remains.html