cannabisnews.com: Pot Gets High Bid On eBay





Pot Gets High Bid On eBay
Posted by FoM on September 24, 1999 at 15:30:56 PT
$10 million offered before auction closed 
Source: San Francisco Chronicle 
Someone offered to sell 500 pounds of marijuana on the eBay auction site this week, and the bidding got as high as $10 million during a 24-hour period before the company shut the auction down. 
It was the latest in a series of bizarre incidents on eBay, where sellers -- in earnest and jest -- have recently put up for sale Elvis Presley's dental X-rays, artwork and poems by serial killers, live babies and dead fetuses, not to mention human kidneys, hearts and private parts. San Jose's eBay quietly removed the marijuana auction from its Web site around 9 p.m. Wednesday. It had gone up on the site at 8:42 p.m. the night before and was scheduled to expire at 8:42 p.m. on October 1. The auction attracted seven successively higher bids -- the last for $10 million, or $2 million more than the previous high. EBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove said the company was alerted to the auction Wednesday by ``an eBay user.'' EBay ``closed it down immediately and notified the authorities,'' he added. Pursglove wouldn't say which authorities were notified. An employee of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in San Francisco said the agency does not comment on investigations. The offer may have been a hoax, said Andre Neumann-Loreck, chief operating officer of AuctionWatch.com, a San Bruno Web site that monitors Internet auction sites and publishes articles about trends and developments. He pointed out that the seller -- identified only by the screen name `'Killpeople'' -- appears to have no history on eBay. People who have bought or sold on eBay normally receive feedback from those they deal with, and the comments are posted on the Web site. The high bidder, identified as `'rdmustang,'' has 11 feedback comments, among them ``great customer,'' ``super-fast payment'' and ``thoughtful and courteous.'' The origin of the auction was listed as ``Ownedville, Florida,'' but there appears to be no such town. The size of the top bid was far out of proportion to the street value of marijuana, which police estimate at $1,000 to $1,200 per pound. That would make a 500-pound stash worth only $500,000 to $600,000. Still, that amounts to more than $60 per ounce -- nearly one-fourth the price of gold. That's gold the metal -- not to be confused with Hanoi Gold, the controlled substance. Neumann-Loreck said the marijuana auction was discovered by one of his company's engineers, Steve Shapery, shortly before eBay yanked it. A photo of the auction offering was reproduced on AuctionWatch.com. The offering shows a photograph of three men posing with about 70 white packages. Two have their faces blotted out, but the one in the middle, with dark hair and a mustache, appears to be undisguised. The seller described the merchandise as '`the best marijuana Holland has to offer. This is a good deal for this much marijuana. Street value is off the charts! Please don't e-mail me about free samples, sorry.'' Neumann-Loreck noted that other auction sites, such as Amazon and Yahoo, also have been hit with hoaxes. But eBay gets hit hardest, not only because it has an overwhelming majority share of the Internet auction market, but also because weird things that happen on eBay attract the most notoriety. Arthur M. Louis, Chronicle Staff WriterFriday, September 24, 1999 ©1999 San Francisco Chronicle  Page B2 Online Site Pulls Marijuana Auction - 9/23/99http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread2995.shtml
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Comment #3 posted by MiGHTY on September 25, 1999 at 08:18:06 PT:
*ALMOST* as much as gold?!?
Umm I hate to say it but wouldn't you LOVE to pay $260.00 an ounce for an ounce of killer kind bud?!? And gold is around $250.00 an ounce. Why doesn't our government tax it, you ask? Because there's too much money to be made in forfitures and arrests (court costs, fines, bail, etc, etc, etc, etc...)-mighty"Don't you think the joker laughs at you?See how they smile like pigs in a sty, see how they snyde.."-The Beatles, 'I am the Walrus'
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Comment #2 posted by steve1 on September 24, 1999 at 16:45:24 PT
$60 per ounce is cheap
Over here in NY you can get about 5 grams for $60. Pot that comes from holland (good stuff) can go for at least (and I stress the words at least)6 times what they say pot is worth. But of course fine wine has its prices as well.
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Comment #1 posted by Fredom Fighter on September 24, 1999 at 16:00:57 PT
Prices
Outrageous........something worth almost as gold per ounce and the government does not want to tax it????
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