It seems likely that I'd gravitate to the session on "Bizarre eBay Stories," presented by the venerable Jim "Griff" Griffith, because, well, I love to read about funny and unusual auctions.
Griff started the session by going into some of the eBay history, which you may have heard by now; how it started in 1995 by Pierre Omidyar as auctionweb, and how it was based an an idea for regular people to buy and sell from each other. One thing I learned in this session was where the name "ebay" came from. Apparently the first similar name Pierre wanted was echobay, but he was told that was already taken. So he said "What about eBay?" And the rest is history.
Griff talked some about how he got involved with eBay...he used to hang out on the boards a lot and created an alter ego of sorts, "Uncle Griff," who was, whimsically, a "50something cross-dressing dairy farmer."
On to the bizarre items. Griff made a point of saving and collecting the stranger auctions out there. A few examples of bizarre auction titles:
"One Soul! Get it before the devil does."
"Young man's virginity, Please Look."
"Fully functional kidney for donation." (eBay soon came out with a rule against selling body parts).
There were also historical events memorabilia, such as the raft Elian Gonzales used to come over from Cuba. People have also tried to sell bits and pieces from major disasters.
One of the funniest was from someone trying to sell:
"The Internet" for 1 million dollars ("it's worth a trillion").
One man sold all his possessions on eBay, which generated considerable PR. He then traveled around the country to visit his items, and chronicled the auctions, their new homes and owners in his book, "All My Life for Sale."
Another very strange auction was the sale of a "ghost in a jar." Just some kind of black mist that a guy had discovered coming out of a jar, and wanted to pass on to the next person...hmmm.
This led to a rash of other "ghost" auctions, as well as some spooky doll auctions.
An early "revenge" auction was that of a man selling his wife's stash of 26 beanie babies...emphatically stating that he didn't know their exact value and was amazed people were so interested in them.
There are many more funny auctions out there, of course. And another bizarre auction celebrity was actually right here in person at eBay Live, modeling his ex-wife's wedding dress on the floor before the Keynote address this morning. It looked even lovelier on him in person.
