Over the years, a lot of items have shown up for sale on Ebay. You can go on Ebay and find rare books dating back hundreds of years. You can also find Beanie Babies dating back 2 years. At times, Ebay has had some very peculiar things for sale too. Right now, you can buy a voodoo hex to put on someone, a mystery mailing tube (whatever that is), and even autographed breast implants. Someone once tried to sell his soul on Ebay.
Kari Smith auctioned something unusual, her face, or at least a part of it. She sold her face for ad space on Ebay to the tune of $10,000 to an online casino called Golden Palace.com. She claims the money will go to a fund to send her son to a private school.
She’s already done the tattoo. Across her forehead is printed in bold black letters, “Golden Palace.com.” Apparently there was great discussion over the issue, including with the tattoo artist who didn’t really want to do the tattoo. The Deseret News had nice interview with Ms. Smith. According to reports, her auction went up and reached $999.99 and then Golden Palace clicked the buy now option on her site for the auction. They met her asking price of $10,000.
Golden Palace has had dealings with Ebay before too. Several months ago, they bought a grilled cheese sandwich that supposedly had the face of the Virgin Mary on it.
The thing is, Ebay’s about the only place Smith could’ve done something like this. Ebay celebrates its 10th anniversary this year and according to their website, they’re the most visited retail site on the Internet.
Ebay has given hundred of millions of people the opportunity to buy and sell products they wouldn’t have found otherwise and entire businesses have sprung strictly to sell products on Ebay. They’ve added a lot to their company, purchasing PayPal as well as classified ad sites and other items to expand their business.
Just as Ebay has had its fans, Ebay has critics too. The giant online auction house raised their rates back in February and a lot of customer got irritated. Many felt the company did a poor job communicating and Ebay lost some business as a result.
A recent story on MSNBC and an article in the Wall Street Journal painted a less than wonderful picture of some aspects of Ebay. Besides the pricing problems, critics say fraud is also a major concern on Ebay. According to “The eBay Effect — Inside a Worldwide Obsession”, Ebay says about 1% of their transactions end being fraudulent although many folks believe that number is higher.
Ebay, despite their troubles, still continues to thrive. Their executives promise to correct some of the problems or improve services in various others. NowI think I’ll bid on that mystery envelope. I wonder what’s in it?
John Stith is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.
