The Most Bizarre Items To Ever Go Up For Auction On eBay
Most of us know eBay as the website where you buy cheap electronics and clothing for half the retail price. In reality, there is a much weirder side of eBay that you have to be curious enough to find. This is the side of eBay that includes strange auction items like a corn flake shaped like Illinois or a haunted rubber duck. Need we say anything else?
Continue on and read about some of the strangest items people have attempted to auction off on eBay, and the shocking prices they actually sold for.
A Holy Grilled Cheese Sandwich
In 1994, Diane Duyser stopped mid-bite when she saw the burn marks looked like a woman's face. It could have been anyone, but after winning $70,000 at a casino that night, she was convinced it was the Virgin Mary.
She auctioned off the sandwich and earned $28,000. It sounds like she ended up with double the payday thanks to some random grill marks.
A Guinea Pig's Suit Of Armor
A guinea pig-sized suit of chainmail armor probably would have gone unnoticed on eBay except the Huffington Post stumbled onto it and reported the find.
The little suit of armor ended up fetching $1,150 and the proceeds all went to a nonprofit called Metropolitan Guinea Pig Rescue.
Britney Spears' Chewed Gum
Most items that celebrities touch don't go for much more than $5 or $10 online, except for one special piece of gum that went for $14,000.
Keep in mind, this happened in 2004 when Britney was at the peak of her popularity. She had just dropped the hit song "Toxic" and performed at the MTV Awards with Madonna and Christina Aguilera. I'd want her saliva too.
The Entire Life Of A Random Australian Man
In 2008, a man named Ian Usher suffered a nasty divorce. Rather than sulking in horrible memories, he decided to auction off his entire life online. Well, we should say his entire material life. Everything from his house to his jet ski was up for grabs.
Someone bought it all for $400,000 and Ian used the money to travel. It sounds like a good deal to me.
Andrew Fischer's Forehead
One smart web designer realized way back in 2005 that they might be the future of company advertising. He decided to auction off his forehead online.
The winner would earn the right to have their logo (temporarily) tattooed on his forehead. The winning bid? $37,375 from a sleep apnea company called SnoreStop.
A Casey Anthony Halloween Mask
At the height of the drama around the Casey Anthony murder trial, some smarty pants online decided to make a latex mask of her face and sell it. It would be the perfect Halloween costume!
The mask sold for a whopping $999,900 and has gone down as the "creepiest mask on the planet."
A Ghost In A Jar
If you believe in paranormal activity then eBay is the place for you. One seller, someone named Teajay101, claimed that the jar they were selling online had a demonic ghost trapped inside.
They even went so far as to claim that they would "not be held responsible" if it escaped the jar. The "ghost" sold for $55,000 but the bidder never paid up.
A Haunted Rubber Duck
I guess you can put anything on eBay and claim it has paranormal powers because someone actually bought a "haunted" rubber duck for $107.50.
The seller said it has the power to possess children, but that they were not responsible for the duck whatsoever after it was shipped out.
A Cornflake Shaped Like Illinois
If you ever needed proof that anything can be sold on eBay, look no further than this Illinois cornflake. A 15-year-old found the flake in her bowl and had the foresight to save it.
The cornflake ended up selling for $1,500 to a man who wanted to add it to his "collection of pop culture and Americana items." Uhm, sure.
An Unknown Species Of Sea Urchins
Apparently, biologists and nerds browse eBay too. One seller in 2006 put up a sea urchin they found online for auction. A few marine biologists noticed the urchin, but it was Dr. Simon Coppard who realized there was nothing else known like it.
There's no word how much the urchin sold for, but it's pretty cool to see eBay contributing to science.
The Meaning Of Life
This eBay item was entirely put on auction as a joke, yet money still ended up changing hands at the end of the day. An anonymous prankster claimed they had "discovered the reason for our existence and will be happy to share this information with the highest bidder."
The highest bidder was only $3.26 but that's a pretty price to pay for that knowledge.
Golf Balls Pooped Out By A Python
in 2008, a farmer was trying to get his hen to start laying eggs. He put golf balls in her nest in the hopes that she'd associate them with eggs. Unfortunately, his pet python slithered in and ate the "eggs."
The golf balls had to be surgically removed from the python. The farmer figured why not try and sell the balls online, and he ended up making more than $1,200.
A Kind, Old Grandmother
A ten-year-old girl tried to sell her sweet grandmother to the highest bidder on eBay. The girl described her grandma as "cuddly but "annoying." Annoying enough to sell to a complete stranger? Wow.
Thankfully eBay took the posting down because it technically violated their human trafficking regulations. That little girl will never be spoiled by grandma again though.
Unwanted Brussels Sprouts
Dan Allam decided that he would auction off his uneaten Brussels sprouts from his holiday dinner. He made Over $100 from the sprouts and donated it all to Make A Wish Foundation.
If I knew that I could have been auctioning off the worst vegetables on my plate I wouldn't have complained so much as a kid.
A College Student's Imaginary Friend
There comes a time in everyone's life where they have to grow up and move on. That must be what happened to Georgia Horrocks when she put her imaginary friend Bernard up for auction.
She said he was in "very good health" and be sent via imagination to the highest bidder.
The Right To Name A Baby
In 2009, a woman from Arkansas decided to make a few extra bucks by auctioning off the sale of her unborn child's name. She tried four different times to complete the sale but eBay removed it every time. Finally, her fifth auction was successful and she made $6,800.
The winning bidder didn't end up naming the child, they said they just wanted to help the woman out.
A Human Liver
Selling organs on the black market online is surprisingly common but it's illegal on a site like eBay. Still, one man from Florida tried to do it. The bids for the liver reached nearly $5.7 million before eBay finally found it and removed the ad.
The steep price just shows how desperate some people are for medical care.
A Half-Eaten French Toast
Well, this isn't any ordinary piece of used French toast. It was bitten into and enjoyed by none other than Justin Timberlake. The singer left it behind at a radio station during his N*Sync days in 2000.
The radio jockey put the toast up for sale and a 19-year-old fan bought it for $1,025. Honestly, I would have done the same thing.
A Box Of Ten Twinkies
In 2012, the Hostess Brands announced that they were shutting down the production of the beloved snack food Twinkies. Of course, this left a gaping hole for eBay sellers to exploit.
Some people began selling boxes of Twinkies for 95% higher than the price in stores. One lucky seller sold a box of ten Twinkies for a whopping $59.99.
Water Drank By Elvis
This one's hard to believe, but someone truly did pay money for water leftover by The King. In December 2004, a bidder bought a few tablespoons of water for $455 that were supposedly leftover from a concert Elvis played in North Carolina in 1977.
How did that water last nearly 30 years without evaporating? We won't ask the tough questions.
E.T. Shaped Breakfast
Obviously, I need to start looking closer at my morning breakfast because this is the second cereal piece to make it on this list. In 2004, a single piece of Nutri-Grain cereal was sold on eBay for $1,035 because it looked like the famous alien from the Steven Spielberg movie.
In all honesty, anything brown and bumpy could look like E.T.
An Alleged Britney Spears Pregnancy Test
A radio station host sold a used (ew) pregnancy test on eBay for a shocking $5,001. They claimed to have found the test in the waste bin of Britney Spears' hotel room in Los Angeles.
It might have actually been hers too because she was staying there with her then-husband, Kevin Federline.
New Zealand
Yes, you read that right, a man actually tried to sell an entire nation back in 2006. The best part? He wasn't even from New Zealand.
The man from Brisbane, Australia put the nation on eBay with a starting bid of one cent, and it reached $3,000 before eBay shut it down.
The Town Of Bridgeville, California
Now this sale was actually legal because the owner of the town put it up for sale. The seller had bought the California ghost town with the intention to revamp it but it proved to be way too much work.
They ended up reselling the town on eBay for $1.77 million.
A Meteorite From Mars
This item is not so much bizarre as it is super cool. You can find thousands of meteorite pieces on earth, but there are only about one hundred that have been brought back from Mars.
One tiny piece was sold for an impressive $450,000 on an eBay auction in 2003.
An F/A 18 Hornet Fighter Jet
Someone decided that spending millions on an old F/A 18 Hornet fighter jet from a scrap yard was a good idea, but they didn't realize how much work it would be to get it going.
They put the jet up for auction on eBay for a starting bid of $9,000,000 but didn't have any takers. I guess they're stuck with a random jet forever now.
The German Language
This eBay bidg wasn't serious at all. How can you auction off an entire language anyway? It was done out of pure spite.
The German Language Association decided to auction off the language to "call attention" to the growing use of English in Germany today. We get it, you're bitter, you point is made.
Lunch With Warren Buffet
To raise money for charity, legendary businessman Warren Buffet auctions off a lunch with himself every year. The highest bid happened back in 2010. A completely unknown bidder spent a mind-blowing $2.6 million for lunch with Buffet.
All I'm saying is if you can afford to pay that much for lunch, you probably don't need his money advice.
A Cheating Wife
Yet another ridiculous eBay auction item that is so outrageous, it's hilarious. In 2008, a British man named Paul Osborn decided to auction off his wife Sharon on eBay. He claimed she had been unfaithful and had an affair with a coworker.
I guess that's one way to tell someone you want a divorce.
Sending Your Cremated Ashes Into Space
There are now numerous ways to send your cremated ashes into space, but the field was slimmer back in 2013 when an anonymous Russian sold the option online.
You could pay to have the seller's relative take your urn up to the International Space Station and send it out into orbit through the waste gateway.
