1. The original Hollywood sign, $450,000
The original Hollywood sign sold for $450,000 in 2005.
While most people only know 'the' Hollywood sign that currently resides in Los Angeles, there are in fact two of them. The first one, installed in 1923 to promote real estate development in Los Angeles, deteriorated so badly that by the late 1970s it read ‘HULLYWOD’ instead of ‘HOLLYWOOD’.
It was replaced in 1978 after Hugh Hefner hosted a fundraising gala at the Playboy Mansion.
Dan Bliss, a producer and entrepreneur, bought the original from a nightclub promoter for and kept it for two years before he auctioned it off on eBay.
He wouldn’t reveal how much he had paid for the sign, but said the price was in the six figures.
California dreaming: The original
Hollywood sign (pictured) was built 1923 to promote real estate
development in Los Angeles. It was sold on eBay for $450,000 in 2005
Unsure what to do with an old Tuscan village you have gathering dust in the attic? eBay might take it off your hands. At least, this is what happened to Pratariccia, an 800-year-old small town 25 miles east of Florence, in 2012. The village, which included 25 abandoned houses over 20 acres of land, was owned by an undisclosed monastic order. The starting price was $5 million, but the bid closed at $3.1 million. Not too bad for a medieval ghost town in need of a restoration.
3. A rock from Mars, $450,000
Martian meteorites are coveted spatial improbabilities. To make one, a rock needs to form on planet Mars then be ejected by the impact of an asteroid or a comet, only to land on the Earth. Less than 200 have been found, which may explain why one Martian meteorite sold for $450,000 when it showed up on eBay in 2003.
4. The meaning of life, $3.62
Forget philosophy, spirituality and self-help books: the key to the meaning of life was actually found on sale on eBay in 2000. ‘I have discovered the reason for existence,’ the seller wrote, ‘and will be happy to share this information with the highest bidder.’
Religious relic: An online casino purchased this 10-year-old grilled cheese sandwich for $28,000
The meaning of life was auctioned off for a meager $3.26 – still above its humble starting price of $0.01.
5. A grilled cheese with the Virgin Mary on it, $3,000
Diane
Duyser rose to eBay fame in 2004 when she posted a listing for a piece
of grilled cheese sandwich with the Virgin Mary’s face imprinted on the
toasted bread, at a starting price of $3,000.
‘I
made this sandwich 10 years ago. When I took a bite out of it, I saw a
face looking up at me - it was Virgin Mary staring back at me. I was in
total shock,’ she said at the time.
The
sandwich, she said, was ‘not intended for consumption’. An online
casino won the auction and shelled out $28,000 for the Madonna grilled
cheese.
6. A corn flake shaped like Illinois, $1,350
You
might want to pay attention next time you pour yourself a bowl of Corn
Flakes. Your breakfast might be worth more than $1,000 - and that's just
for a single flake.
That is, if you’re lucky enough to find a corn flake shaped like Illinois – and a buyer willing to spend $1,350 to acquire it.
This
is what happened to Melissa and Emily McIntire, two sisters from
Virginia, in 2008. The winning bidder, Monty Kerr, had previously bought
a corn flake said to be the world’s largest – but it crumbled to pieces
during delivery.
He planned to use the Illinois-shaped corn flake for his traveling museum.
‘We're starting a collection of pop culture and Americana items,’ he said. ‘We thought this was a fantastic one.’
Pricey snack: This Dorito was sold for $1,209 because it is shaped like a Pope's hat
7. A Dorito shaped like the Pope’s hat, $1,209
Less
than a year after its holy grilled cheese antics, the online casino
that purchased Diane Duyser’s holy sandwich struck again and bid on a
Dorito chip shaped like the Pope’s hat.
‘We
believe that this chip, like the Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwich,
is another perfect example of American pop culture,’ said Richard Rowe,
CEO of GoldenPalace.com.
‘In
all honesty, the resemblance is phenomenal. We felt that it would make a
prefect addition to our collection. It will fit in perfectly with all
our other eccentric acquisitions.’
The price of eccentricity? $1,209.
8. Justin Timberlake’s French toast – and a lot of half-eaten food, $1,000+
Picking up an A-lister’s leftovers may be worth a bit of dumpster diving.
An N’Sync fan paid more than $1,000 in 2000 for scrapes of Justin Timberlake’s breakfast.
A
DJ from the New York radio station Z-100 picked up his two slices of
French toast after a morning interview and put it up for auction along
with Timberlake’s plate and fork and ‘extra syrup’.
‘I'll
probably freeze-dry it, then seal it ... then put it on my dresser,’
said Kathy Summers, the highest bidder, who was 19 at the time.
Timberlake’s
French toast created a market for celebrities’ leftovers. Britney
Spears’ half-eaten sandwich, her used chewing gum and One Direction’s
Niall Horan's Vegemite toast were also auctioned on eBay – the latter
for a whopping $100,000.
9. William Shatner’s kidney stones, $25,000
Star Trek actor William Shatner may have found a way to turn a painful experience into an opportunity.
He
was taken to the hospital in 2006 with ‘unbelievable’ back pain and had
a kidney stone surgically removed. But rather than head home to begin
his recover, the actor seized upon the opportunity for enterprise.
He retrieved the stone from the doctors and put it on eBay along with the tube and string used during the operation.
Goldenpalace.com,
the same online casino that purchased Duyne’s Virgin Mary grilled
cheese and the Dorito chip shaped like a hat, swept in once again and
spent $25,000 – all of which went to Habitat for Humanity, a housing
charity.
Body of work: An online casino Goldenpalace.com paid $25,000 for actor William Shatner's kidney stones in 2006
10. An imaginary girlfriend, $41
Some people don’t want to bother with dating, but still want to reap the social prestige that comes with a relationship.
They
may have been the target market of Judy, a 22-year-old college student
from Texas who offered to pose as someone’s long-distance girlfriend for
a month in a 2004 eBay listing.
She
offered to write one letter a week, including pictures, and at the end
of the month, she said, the highest bidder should dump her and she would
write a final letter begging him to take her back.
Her
first auction attracted 16,000 viewers and ended at $41. Her second
one, viewed 20,000 times, earned her $81 – and a trail of copycats. The
trend has since grown beyond eBay, with websites like
Imaginarygirlfriends.com and Fakeinternetgirlfriend.com offering similar
services.
Woman for hire: This former college
student from Texas offered to pose as someone's long-distance girlfriend
for a month in a 2004 eBay listing
11. A town in California, $700,000 - $1.77 million
Being
sold on eBay is not just for Tuscan villages. Bridgeville, an 83-acre
town in California, was auctioned not just once, but twice.
It
became the first town sold on the website in 2002 for $1.77 million.
‘Many of the structures included with the town could be described as
fixer-uppers,’ the listing said. ‘Be prepared to do a lot of work to get
the town into sparkling condition.’
Despite
the warnings, the winning bidder backed out after seeing the town,
which was sold in 2004 to businessman Bruce Krall for $700,000.
Krall
put Bridgeville up for sale again in 2006, this time including three
cows, eight houses and a post office. Daniel La Paille, a 25-year-old
entertainment manager from Los Angeles, won the bid at $1.25 million.
12. A woman’s forehead, $10,000
Using
a person’s forehead as advertising space is more common then it sounds –
the practice even has a name: Forehead advertising.
It
began with temporary tattoos, but the trend took a drastic turn when
Kari Smith, a 30-year-old mother from Utah, put her forehead up for
auction.
She
said she wanted to use the money to send her son to private school. The
bid ended at $10,000, with Goldenpalace.com claiming yet another spot
in the bizarre eBay auction hall of fame.
Spreading the word: Kari Smith listed
her forehead for advertising, so she could use the money she earned to
send her son to private school
13. A letter written by Albert Einstein, $3 million
Albert
Einstein did not believe in God and told German philosopher Eric
Gutkind ‘the word was for him nothing more than the expression and
product of human weaknesses’ in a famous handwritten letter sent in
1954.
It
showed up on eBay more than 50 years later and went to an anonymous
buyer after only two bids, reaching an impressive $3,000,100 – just
above its starting price of $3 million.
14. A piece of tape, $200
Who could possibly want to pay for an old piece of tape?
A fan of veteran performance artist Marina Abramovic might consider it, as shown by a 2013 eBay listing.
The
tape was used as a marker for Abramovic’s ‘The Artist is Present’
exhibition, during which she sat on the same chair for 736.5 hours at
the MoMa
The starting price was a modest penny, but the bidding war brought it up to more than $200.
15. One of the drills that dug the Channel Tunnel, $63,000
Ten
years after the opening of the Channel Tunnel in 1994, one of the
eleven boring machines used to build it showed up on eBay. It had
‘removed a half million cubic meters of chalk and soil’ according to the
listing.
The
580-ton drill sold for $62,795 – not including delivery. Eurotunnel,
the company that operates the tunnel, warned that returns wouldn’t be
accepted.
Master salesman: Dan Allam sold his 'unwanted Christmas lunch Brussels sprouts' for $156 on eBay
16. Unwanted Brussels sprouts from a Christmas dinner, $156
When
Dan Allam’s sister confessed she had once sold a ‘hideous jumper’ she
had received as a present on eBay, his mind went racing.
The
then 21-year-old from the UK, convinced he could sell ‘anything’ on the
website, put two Brussels sprouts leftover from his Christmas dinner up
for auction.
Astonishingly,
he received dozens of offers and questions from potential buyers. Some
wanted to know how the sprouts would taste and others inquired about
their size.
The
bid ended at $156, which Allam donated to the Make A Wish Foundation.
He did the same thing a year later, this time with five Brussels
sprouts.
17. A man’s life, $325,000
Giving up everything: Ian Usher put his 'life' for sale after his wife left him
When
Ian Usher’s wife left him six years after they moved from Britain to
Australia, he was so desperate for a fresh start he put his entire life
for sale.
His
eBay listing included his three-bedroom house in Perth and everything
inside of it –car, jet ski and parachuting gear included. Usher even
promised the highest bidder a trial at his job and an introduction to
his friends.
The rest sounds like a movie: Usher used the $325,000 proceeds to start fresh and tackle an impressive list of life-goals.
Seven
years later, he has learnt how to fly a plane, run with bulls in
Pamplona, met millionaire Richard Branson and purchased his own
Caribbean island. He recounts his experiences in two books: ‘A life
sold’, published in 2010, and ‘Paradise delayed’, out in 2014.
18. A historical baseball bat, $577,000
‘Shoeless’
Joe Jackson, a famous major league baseball player during the first
half of the 20th century who still holds the third highest batting
average in history, wasn’t the only one with a nickname. His bat was
known as Black Betsy, a reference to its dark color.
One
of baseball’s most valuable artifacts, Black Betsy was listed on eBay
in July 2001. It sold ten days later at a whopping $577,610 and was then
believed to be the world’s most expensive baseball bat.
19. A $38,475 car – for less than a dollar
British
radio DJ Tim Shaw should have thought twice before telling glamour
model Jodie Marsh he would leave his wife for her live on air in June
2005.
As
it turned out, his wife, Hayley, was listening – and she lost no time
in launching a counter-attack. She put her husband’s car, a Lotus Esprit
Turbo worth $38,475, up for auction at a meager 77 cents.
‘I
need to get rid of this car immediately - ideally in the next two to
three hours before my husband gets home to find it gone and all his
belongings in the street,’ she wrote.
The Lotus Esprit Turbo sold in minutes.
A woman scorned: When British DJ Tim
Shaw told model Jodie Marsh he would leave his wife for her in 2005, his
angry spouse, who was listening in, sold his $38,475 car on eBay for 77
cents
20. Bob Dylan’s childhood home, $94,600
Twenty years before he took on New York’s folk scene in the 1960s, Bob Dylan was born and grew up in Minnesota.
Visitors
can still walk past his childhood home in Duluth, 150 miles north of
Minneapolis. He lived there until he was six years old.
Kathy
Burns, from Maryland, auctioned it in 2001, describing it as ‘a
must-have for the ultimate diehard Dylan fan’. It went for $94,600.
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