eBay UK Hits 10M Users

eBay's UK site has been growing by leaps and bounds. In less than a year, they have doubled their user base and have now passed the mark of 10M registered users.

That of course is good news for eBay, but one thing I don't quite understand is why eBay breaks apart their registrations to various countries when the auctions are the same if you look on ebay.com, ebay.co.uk or any other International eBay site.

Missile Launcher For Sale

Some guy in the United Kingdom is selling a missile launching vehicle. It's a Russian, short-range missile launcher (FROG-7). The thing is so big it needed to be built with fiberglass parts on a titanium chassis.

The beast only has 2,200 km on it, and is getting a new paint job (complete with Russian logos). Would be interesting to see it painted up with the old U.S.S.R. sickle and hammer, with a missile loaded on it, driving down the freeway. heh

Apparently the guy was also selling a missile to go with it, but it violated eBay's listing guidelines so he was forced to remove it. The interesting part is it didn't violate eBay's guidelines for what you would think (it being a fully functional missile that could deliver weapons of mass destruction). Instead, it violated eBay's rules because he was selling the missile and the missile launcher on the same auction and should have been listed as a separate item.

So if you are wanting to start your own little mini army, you can add a missile launcher to your arsenal (and contact the guy privately if you want a missile to go with it). Alternately, you could build your own with an Apollo nose cone starter kit.

Anyway, if you want to buy this thing, do it here (and send me a picture of it after the paint job).

Apollo 8 Rocket Nose Cone

I have no clue what use anyone would have for this, but maybe some collector would like to have it. It's a nose cone from a rocket. Anyway, if you want to get your first part for building your own Apollo rocket in your backyard, I would suggest buying this thing right away (the opening bid is $15,000).

You can check it out for yourself over here if you want.

Finance eBay Motors Purchase Online

eBay announced an agreement with E-Loan today that allows buyers to quickly finance an automobile or motorcycle purchase at eBay Motors. You must make $18,000 or more per year, and live in the United States. They will finance amounts between $2,500 and $100,000 and from what they say have rates better than banks or credit unions. Loan processing is handled in under 24 hours.

If it's everything they say it is, it could be a boon for eBay Motors. Financing was always the part that was a hassle.

Overstock.com Auctions Jump 50%

Since eBay announced their price increases, auctions at Overstock.com have jumped 50%. That sounds like it's great news from a marketing standpoint doesn't it? Let me put that into perspective for you. If you take every single Overstock.com auction, the number of auctions they have is roughly the equivalent to the number of auctions eBay has for people selling just video game controllers.

So when it comes down to it, if you start with zero and increase that number by 50%, you still have zero. Not really that big of a cut into eBay's market share. If Overstock.com announces they have just 10% market share of the online auction market, I'll be more impressed.

Giant Frosted Flake

It seems to me that all the recent whacky eBay auctions are from Texas. Well here's another stupid eBay auction for you... a "giant frosted flake".

Bidding is currently at $64.14 and if you want to check out the auction yourself, you can click here.

Advertise on a Fivehead

Normally I don't mention copycat auctions, but this one was kind of funny. This auction ended up closing at $30,100 for someone to put an ad on their forehead for a month.

This auction is now accepting bids for the guy's "fivehead". :)

eBay Song

It's not a new song (it's on Weird Al Yankovic's 2003 album Poodle Hat), but I first heard it today. For all the eBay freaks out there, the eBay Song is something that all eBay addicts can relate to.

If that URL is down, I found a mirror over here.

eBay Loses $13,072,585,200 Today

The stock market is a fickle creature. eBay announces today that they are wildly profitable (they made $205.4M profit in the last quarter), with income up 44%. So what do investors do? Everyone freaks out and sells eBay stock. Which makes the stock loose $19.72 of value per share. That means they lost over $13B worth of market cap today. That's crazy if you ask me.

Purpose In Life

It seems like there are more "dumb" auctions on eBay than real auctions these days. Here's the latest... someone selling their Purpose in life.

Check it out here.

eBay Toolbar

eBay put out a new version of their eBay Toolbar (you need Internet Explorer for Windows to use it) today. It looks like it's pretty much a minor update from first glance. All your normal stuff like the ability to monitor auctions, protect your account, do eBay searches, etc.

If you want to snag the new toolbar, do it here.

eBay Buys Rent.com

It seems eBay has been buying (or heavily investing in) everything it can get it's hands on lately. They have recently purchased classified listings sites around the world, Billpoint, Kruse, Baazee, invested in Craig's List, etc. Now they are in the process of wrapping up the acquisition of rent.com (the most popular apartment locator website).

Maybe eBay would like to acquire the rights to use my brain for a period of 5 years for $100M. Sounds like a good deal to me. :)

eBay Acquires StoreSense

eBay made a cash-only transaction with Kurant to acquire most of their assets, including their flagship product, StoreSense. eBay also plans to hire pretty much all of Kurant's staff and continue to support their existing customers.

Personally, I don't exactly know why... StoreSense really isn't anything that someone couldn't recreate, but whatever... Since eBay is going to raise their fees, they have to figure out how to spend it I guess.

eBay Raising Fees

eBay is changing their fees, effective Feburary 18, 2004.

Buy It Now fees will be as follows:
$0.01-9.99 / $0.05
$10-24.99 / $0.10
$25-49.99 / $0.20
$50+ / $0.25

10 Day Duration fee is being raised to $0.40 (from $0.20).

eBay Stores has a monthly fee of $15.95 instead of $9.95.

Closing Price fee will be:
$0.01-$25 = 8%
$25.01-$1000 = 5%
$1,000+ = 3%

Business/Industrial items changed to a flat $20 insertion fee for the following categories:

• Agriculture & Forestry > Modern Tractors & Equipment (category #: 91952)
  
• Construction > Heavy Equipment (25249)
  
• Food Service & Retail > Concession Trailers & Carts (67145)
  
• Healthcare, Lab & Life Science > Imaging & Aesthetics Equipment (92035)
  
• Industrial Supply, MRO > Fork Lifts & Other Lifts (42915)
  
• Manufacturing & Metalworking > Manufacturing Equipment (92080)
  
• Manufacturing & Metalworking > Metalworking Equipment (92082)
  
• Office, Printing & Shipping > Commercial Printing Presses (26247)

Gallery fees for eBay Motors is going from $0.25 to $0.35.

$5 reserve fee on eBay Motors.

$8 10-day listing for eBay Motors.

Hat Beat Packers, Not The Vikings

The Minnesota Vikings beat the Green Bay Packers in the first round of the NFL playoffs this year. Apparently it really didn't have much to do with the Vikings though. Instead, a bewitched Green Bay fan's hat caused them to loose. Currently, there are 24 bids with the high bid at $39.73. You can follow the auction over here if you want.

Human Ad Space

Andrew Fisher, a 20 year old college student has put advertising space on his forehead up for auction. The winner will get to put their ad on his forehead for 30 days. Currently, bidding is up to $2,550 and the money made will go towards paying for college.

Check out the auction here.

eBay Upgraded To Buy

eBay stock outlook was upgraded to BUY today by Marquis Investment Research, with a target price of $120. eBay currently trades at $107.11.

Life Choices

Someone is selling their future life choices on eBay for $15,000,000. Sounds more like the guy is trying to pitch a reality TV show idea to me.

If you want to check it out, click here.

Frank Must Die

A lady soliciting donations on eBay for her son's cancer treatment had the auction canceled by eBay because it violated certain eBay terms. But the auction is back online, but does not mention donations.

So far (in just a few hours), there has been 28 bids with the top bid being $5,000.

Check out the auction here.

BTW, "Frank" is the name of given to the tumor, not her son's name. :)

David Beckham's BMW

David Beckham's (of English soccer fame) old car (a 1997 BMW) sold on eBay for more than $170,000. The blue book on the car is roughly $30,000. If I was a retired athlete, I wouldn't seek a gig doing news broadcasts... I would buy cars, drive them a few hundred miles and then sell them for 6 times what they are worth to my whacky fans.

Beckham better watch out, because whoever paid that much for his car is probably stalking him too.

I remember a few years ago when the Ford Expedition from the Soprano's (HBO show) sold on eBay for 3 times what it was worth.

Jackon's ex-wife to sell ring

Michael Jackson's ex-wife (Debbie Rowe) plans to sell her wedding ring on eBay soon. It's a 2.13 carat diamond round-cut that Michael Jackson bought in Sydney Australia.

BTW, who in the hell is Debbie Rowe? How many times has Michael Jackson been married? I did a little poking around with Google and I guess Debbie Rowe was a paid surrogate mother for Michael Jackson that he later married. And now they are battling for child custody.

I can't think of any stranger guy in the world than Michael Jackson (that doesn't have to do with anything, but I had to write that). :)

eBay's new CTO

The former CIO of AT&T Wireless (Chris Corrado) is going to replace eBay's CTO (Marty Abbott). I don't know much about Marty, but I think he has probably done a good job. I can't recall any major outages in eBay since he started in 1999 (there definitely were some before then). And he probably had a big say in eBay dropping Passport, which is a good thing.

Hopefully Chris will do as good of a job as Marty.

Prisoner Boiler Suit

Somehow a prisoner boiler suit was smuggled out of a prison and is now up for sale on eBay. Interesting how an entire suit could be smuggled because prisoners are completely searched when they leave the prison. I think it's in inside job!

You can check it out here.

South Texas Snow

$250,000 for a bowl of South Texas snow (for those of you that don't know, it snowed 4.4 inches in Texas on Christmas Eve). It hasn't snowed in Texas for about a hundred years.

I thought $250,000 was a little steep, but it comes with free shipping, so I guess it's not too bad.

You can check it out here.

Raising Money For Army Equipment

Sean Flynn is a 18 year old US army reservist who raised $3,000 for his unit by selling sports memorabilia on eBay.

The poor kid was criticized for the auction by the army itself.

If I was going to be shipped off to Iraq and I didn't have any body armor or other necessary protective gear, you can sure as hell bet I'll be raising money for my own equipment too. Hell, I'd probably raise money for whatever I could. Maybe I could get my own tricked out Humvee that I didn't have to share. heh

Fluid Blogger Template

I like this Blogger template, but I didn't like the fact it could only be used for a fixed width setup. So I went ahead and hacked on it a little bit. So now the layout is fluid. Much better if you ask me.

It doesn't work right in Internet Explorer, but IE doesn't support CSS really well, so that's not my problem. I ended up making the CSS a little different for IE users. IE users don't see the rounded corners because their browser sucks. For Windows users, Firefox is a much better browser anyway. You are better off getting it here.