Published on: Sunday, 21st May, 2006 on 7days.ae
The old joke about a man who would sell his own granny for a profit has already come true on ebay.
One particularly callous seller tried to offload his grandmother on the hugely successful online aution site - starting bid unspecified.
As well as selling a granny, eBay has also seen one wit try to flog an invisible man and someone else launch a Faustian bid to sell his soul.
And in a tale that will draw knowing nods from sports fans everywhere, a North American ice hockey fan, crushed by years of failure, has put his loyalty to his once-beloved team up for sale.
"My Suffering Must End," said the "Free Agent Fan" who put his lifelong loyalty to the Toronto Maple Leafs up for grabs on eBay after the storied franchise missed the National Hockey League playoffs.
The going rate for a Leafs fan’s loyalty? A cool $16.5 dollars, though the bad news is some other Toronto hockey fan topped the bidding. Catherine England, a spokeswoman for San Jose,
California-based eBay, said that while this fan’s angst was a first, there have been a host of people trying to sell intangibles on the site.
So will we see people trying to sell elderly relatives on our local versions of eBay - dubizzle.com, souq.com or dubaidonkey.com, all of which offer online classifieds or auctions to UAE dwellers?
Maktoob.com set up the first Arabic and English online auction site in the UAE in 2000.
The Mazadmaktoob site, and CashU, a money transfer system, together became Souq.com in 2002.
The Souq.com site has now had millions of auctions worldwide.
The locally based website is probably more famous for selling Robbie Willams tickets than anything else, but there is plenty more up for grabs on the site.
It has the usual collection of mobile phones, Playstation and Gameboy consoles and games for sale. Souq.com also has a large collection of furniture adverts where expats can clear out their villas before leaving the country.
In the ‘everything else’ section of the site it’s possible to purchase rollerblades, cosmetics, and there is even an apartment in International City, for which the current bid is dhs355,055.
The variety of goods varies from lipstick to somebody selling their Persian cat.
Souq.com recorded that they had seen over dhs2 million in transactions on the site in March 2006.
Another Dubai-based site is dubizzle.com.
This is most popular among new arrivals in Dubai for offering property listings, but lots of people also look at the website’s classifieds section, and that’s where the unusual stuff can be found.
“We’ve had a lot of weird things put up for sale on the site over the past ten months,” said JC Butler, managing partner at Dubizzle.com.
“I know one guy had a donkey for sale on Dubizzle at one point, there was also a Sheikh’s Lamborghini sold though Dubizzle.
“A yacht was also for sale on the site - it was going for four million dirhams,” Butler continued.
The car sales on Dubizzle have been brisk in the ten months it has existed said Sim Whatley, managing partner of the website.
“We have had people who have sold their cars within 24 hours of posting it on the site,” he said.
The famous Lamborghini sold within two weeks.
But donkeys and high end sports cars aside, the UAE’s auction sites have quite some way to go before they match eBay for the bizarre and curious.
Enterprising eBayers have tried to sell water from a cup that Elvis supposedly drank from, a firm handshake and a UFO Drivers Licence, said Catherine England from eBay.
"One woman listed the ghost of her father. Her son was afraid of his grandfather’s cane, so they listed the cane on the site," she said.
A jilted husband-to-be was so angry, he modelled his fiancée’s wedding dress on the site, and sold it off.
Other bizarre listings have involved a piece of gum chewed by pop idol Britney Spears.
And perhaps the most famous sale was that of a half-eaten, ten-year-old grilled cheese sandwich that the owner, a woman from Florida, claimed bore the image of the Virgin Mary.
An Internet gaming company, GoldenPalace.com, eventually purchased it for $28,000.
Such bizarre listings have prompted eBay to introduce a rule that the object handed over between bidder and seller must be a tanglible one, England said.
Even celebrities are getting in on the online aution act. 7DAYS reported in April that ‘Desperate Housewives’ actress Nicolette Sheridan had placed her engagement ring on eBay after ending her engagement to Niklas Soderblum last year.
One lucky Chelsea fan bid ten million pounds for the medal that Jose Mourinho, the Chelsea manager, flung into the crowd after winning the English Premiership.
Most people however just use the site to sell unwanted gifts, consumer products that are no longer needed or wanted or to make extra cash while clearing out their cluttered homes.
Earning cash for old trash is not such a bad deal after all, whichever way you look at it, and keep an eye out for those ‘items wanted’ ads.
“At one point in the stuff wanted section, there was somebody looking for a flux capacitor - the missing part of the DeLorean car from the ‘Back to the Future’ movies,” said Dubizzle’s Butler.
If you happen to have one of those lying around, now’s the time to earn some extra cash. Just contact Dubizzle.com.
The ten weirdest things ever sold on ebay
1 Ghost in a jar
This was a jar found by an unlucky metal detector enthusiast, who was convinced the jar was haunted. He had more than 60 bids for it.
2 Serial Killer’s fingernails
The nails of Roy Norris, a serial killer from California who killed five people, were sold for $9.99
3 Real Shrunken Heads
Straight from the jungles of Ecuador, more than 26 shrunken heads have been placed on eBay.
4 USAF MIssile
Yes, a real, if disarmed, missile was sold off on eBay. Though since, eBay have banned firearms and weapons from being sold.
6 UFO detector
A prototype manufactured by a Brazilian company went for $135.03
7 The meaning of life
This conumdrum was up for sale but only received eight bids. It sold for a mere $3.26 in the end.
8 The Internet
Someone put the worlwide web up for sale for a bargain asking price of just one dollar. Including free internet access.
9 Russian Test Space Shuttle
The bidding for this piece of history topped out at $25,200 but was never sold. The shipping costs were $5,000 alone.
10 A MIG fighter jet
This jet was sold to a chinese businessman in April 2006, for only $20, 000 but he couldn’t import it into China.