http://www.auction-genius-course.com/listings/danrather.shtml

It will be interesting to see how high the bidding goes on this entertaining auction, but it's quite possible that eBay will remove it before completion, hence the copy on my website above. If you'd like to follow the live listing, go here:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=377&item=2490659283

Clever eBay sellers even capitalize on natural phenomenon, like Hurricanes Ivan, Frances and Charley:

http://www.auction-genius-course.com/listings/hurricane-ivan.shtml

This memorabilia was available even before Ivan stormed into my home town of Atlanta. If I found a T-shirt showing Georgia, I'd buy the darned thing!

As for fame and fortune, one of the most famous auctions of 2004 was that of Wedding Dress Larry, mentioned in an earlier blog entry. Larry found fame, and some fortune, by selling his ex-wife's wedding dress:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001915316_brodeur29m.html

You can see Larry's original listing here:

http://www.auction-genius-course.com/listings/weddingdress.shtml

Larry has turned into a minor star himself, but our love affair with movie stars and sports figures is alive and well on eBay. Almost anything with the name of a famous person sells for high prices, and we even have a fascination for the gruesome. An auction for the bathtub where James Earl Ray stood to assassinate Martin Luther King Jr. was removed by eBay:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/South/07/16/ebay.tub.ap

eBay says it is against its policy to auction any item "that graphically portrays violence or victims of violence, and lacks substantial social, artistic or political values."

As eBay has grown, it has imposed more and more rules, so it isn't as funky as it once was, but a diligent viewer can still find amazing auctions. I won't be pretentious enough to say eBay is a 'microcosm of America', but it's still pretty cool stuff. If you can't have fun, what's the point?