BIDDERS in an internet auction are offering over 13,000 euro ($22,174.84) for a wartime German encoding machine, similar to ones whose messages were cracked by British code breakers in World War Two.

The portable Enigma encryption machine made in 1941 has a keyboard and a series of rotors designed to scramble messages.

It is up for sale on internet auction site, eBay.

"We've had it inspected by an expert who said that due to its good condition it looks very likely to have been in German state ownership at the time," said Alexander Urff of Sales Service, the Munich-based company selling the device.

Mr Urff said he was offering the Enigma machine on behalf of a customer whose grandfather bought it just after the war.

He believes the scrambler is genuine but serial numbers which could give a clue to its history had been removed.

Encased in sturdy oak boxes, the Enigma machines were most famously used by Hitler's forces and featured in a successful novel and 2001 film of the same title, starring Kate Winslet.

The film, based on secret work done at Britain's Bletchley Park during the war, is about a young man who helps the British authorities to break the Nazis' military codes.

Starved for cash, the New Orleans school district is taking a long shot and hoping to sell its flooded, unsalvageable school buses on eBay.

Some submerged to their roofs in the black flood waters, the yellow school buses were widely photographed in the days after Hurricane Katrina and have become an icon of the city's devastated school system.

School officials acknowledge the sale of the buses on the Internet auction site may puzzle some people used to more traditional school fundraisers like bake sales.

"There's no shame in it. Not one bit," said school board president Phyllis Landrieu. "This is a new mechanism for selling things. I think it's very upbeat what we're doing."

Only 23 of 117 Orleans Parish public schools have reopened. They face a $111 million shortfall -- about a quarter of the district's $430 million annual operating budget. The district also has $264 million in outstanding debt, carried over from before Hurricane Katrina.

A total of 85 schools flooded, and wind damaged many more. It took three months for the first public school to reopen. Now, the schools that are holding classes have around 9,500 students, about 15 percent of the 60,000 enrolled before the storm.

The school district plans to put one bus up for sale on eBay this week. If it succeeds, more of the 259 ruined buses will be offered.

"It's an example of how bad the situation is that we would have to come up with this idea," said Richard White, schools spokesman.

The district plans to contract out its student transportation.

Mark McClean is a 48-year-old "bold shy guy stumblin', bumblin' successfully through life" in South Bend, Ind. Until recently McClean was a full-time medical device sales representative, but now he's trying to make it on a new path: selling stuff full-time on eBay. He's chronicling his adventures, of course, on his blog, My eBay Adventure (http://myebayadventure.blogspot.com/" title="http://myebayadventure.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"http://myebayadventure.blogsp...).

From learning curves ("'Learning Curves' are oh so cunning, preying on my greatest weakness: pride. I must know more and I must know it NOW!) to packing peanuts ("What an experience!! What a release!! This must be eBay nirvana. This is why I am doing all this other crap."), McClean takes you along for the ride.

He's also invited others to share their adventures on the blog, including the story of Pamela, the stay-at-home mom whose initial sale of an unwanted jungle-print wallpaper border turned into a serious income source and a book about the process.

So, what's McClean selling? Best I can tell right now is that he's selling coffee presses, but somehow the eBay thing has passed me by and I'm a downright eBay illiterate.

You can check out what other people have to say about him on eBay (http://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-1736786-5463217 ?loc=http" title="http://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-1736786-5463217 ?loc=http" target="_blank"http://www.anrdoezrs.net/clic...%3A//ebay.com), under the member profile mjauctions59.

Ultimately, My eBay Adventure is worth checking out if you're a fan of eBay.

The hackers did not have their paws on that many accounts, but they were flogging them to their mates who could use them to post items for sale, collect payments and then never deliver the goods.

The site was spotted by security outfit Sunbelt Software reported it to eBay, which had a quiet word with the Russian ISP to have it taken offline.

Sunbelt said that the data was probably harvested through phishing attacks or a Trojan horse viruses.

The Website was registered to a Californian address.

Question: I am a Windows XP user with cable Internet and a wireless router. I don't have any issues using my wireless laptop. However, about a week to 10 days ago, I began having problems browsing on my desktop using Explorer (6.0) and Netscape (7.1).

Here is an example of what happens. I can go to eBay, on Explorer or Netscape, and browse various items. However, if I attempt to "sign in," go to "My eBay," or when viewing an item try to "add to watch list," the following happens:

In Explorer, I get the message: "The page cannot be displayed.
 
"The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. The Web site might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your browser settings.

"Please try the following:"

In Netscape, I see: "The connection was refused when attempting to contact signin.ebay.com."

I have compared the security settings between my laptop and desktop and can't find any differences.

Answer: According to eBay's Help, it suggests you have cookies enabled and that your browser supports Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology. If it doesn't, then you need to upgrade your browser. Here is the link to eBay's suggestions and details on how to enable cookies: http://pages" title="http://pages" target="_blank"http://pages. ebay.com/help/newtoebay/sign-i n-trouble.html.

The Wise Guys are Jennifer Paulson, Doug Anderson, Lam Nguyen and Michael Golden. E-mail computer questions to wiseguys@argusleader.com or write to Wise Guys, Argus Leader, Box 5034, Sioux Falls, SD 57117-5034. Visit www.argus leader.com/wiseguys/ for previous articles.

Comic book geeks, this is your auction. Spider-Man co-creator and all-around comics god Stan Lee is selling his favorite car, a 1987 Mercedes 420 SEL gray touring sedan on eBay.

The car has close to 100,000 miles on it. Lee bought it in 1991with 48,500 miles on it and has driven it only a few thousand miles each year. The license plate MRVLCMX  (Marvel Comics) is available with the car and Stan Lee will autograph the dashboard. So far bidding is pretty low at $3550. The auction ends on Wednesday.

We already showed you the Brokeback Mountain shirts, now the 1950 GMC pickup used in the movie is for sale. The black truck was driven by Jake Gyllenhaal and is seen during several scenes in the movie. The truck has its original engine and is in good running condition.

It was bought from High Meadow Productions who handled transportation for the movie.  The interior was restored for the movie and has a brown leather bench seat with black dash. 

So far bidding has been light compared to the frenzy over the Brokeback shirts and the auction ends on March 30.

The flophouse bathtub in which James Earl Ray stood in to shoot dead civil rights leader Martin Luther King is up for sale on eBay for a third time.

The auction, scheduled to run for 10 days, reopened on Monday with an opening bid of 7,500 dollars (£4,200), D’Army Bailey, the Memphis, Tennessee, judge who owns the tub, said.

A portion of the sale’s proceeds would go towards the Boys and Girls Clubs of Memphis, he said.

The tub first went on sale in July 2004 and drew a bid of £84,500, but eBay removed it over concerns the item might be considered offensive, particularly to King’s family.

But the website’s operators later decided the item’s historic value met its guidelines. It was put up for auction a second time, but did not sell.

Bailey, one of the founders of the National Civil Rights Museum located at the site of King’s death, said he got the tub in 1983.

King was shot on the balcony of The Lorraine Motel while in Memphis to help lead a strike by city sanitation workers in 1968.

If you didn’t get your Radiohead tour tickets at 9am this morning you’re out of luck – they’ve all sold out.

Tickets for the band’s upcoming mini-tour of Britain and Europe sold out within minutes of going on sale, leaving thousands of fans disappointed.

Despite lead singer Thom Yorke recently criticising the sale of tickets on eBay for their upcoming London charity show, paying out inflated prices on the internet auction site will now be the only way of seeing the band.

However, alongside 12 exclusive dates at seven different venues this summer, Radiohead will also be playing the V Festival on 19-20 August, which is not yet sold out.
by Chris Taylor

Prospective entrepreneurs wishing to learn more about buying and selling products and services on the Internet site eBay can turn to Columbus State University's Continuing Education Division.

The school has three eBay workshops on its schedule. They include "Selling on eBay" seminars, one that begins May 11 and runs through June 29. The other starts Sept. 14 and wraps up Nov. 2.

The classes are 6:30-8:30 p.m. every Thursday, costing $155 per person. They are held at CSU's Elizabeth Bradley Turner Center, located at the corner of East Lindsay and College Drive.

For those who would rather learn the online marketplace via their own computers, CSU has a "Learn to Buy and Sell on eBay" seminar. The cost is $89.

The Web course is designed to help sellers create copy and photos that will sell, handle financial transactions and ship the goods. Buyers will learn how to size up auction items and bid a proper price.

For more information on the eBay courses and other classes offered by CSU's Continuing Education Division, call (706) 568-2023 or view the university's offerings online at www.conted.colstate.edu.

In a world where mobile devices and e-shopping win more and more grounds, eBay has decided to combine both utility and comfort by allowing the about 100 million users of its PayPal online payment service to make money transfers and transactions from their mobile phones.

The service is known as PayPal Mobile and, at the moment, it is being tested by the company's employees.

According to an eBay spokeswoman, Amanda Pires, it will be available for public use in the next few weeks in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. These will be then followed by about another 55 countries, although no specific plans have been disclosed yet.

Basically, the service allows its users to make person-to-person transactions, buy or donate, just by sending a simple text message sent from their mobile phones with the code of the product they wish to acquire or with the specific command to send money to some other account. Another option for the money transfers will be calling an automated customer service system and using voice commands to transmit funds, according to their web site.

"This is very important because it is going to create an awareness that your mobile phone is much more than just a device for talk", said Dan Schatt, an analyst with financial consulting firm Celent. "It allows you to make transactions."

The service will require users to register their mobile devices with PayPal's web site and select a PIN code so that unauthorized use may be avoided.

You know if it's sellable, eBay has a category for it. In addition to auctions hawking futon covers, baseball cards and Depression glass, this 10-year-old online yard sale has a category called Weird Stuff, where the descriptions of items for sale often look like the subject lines of the spam caught by your e-mail filter ("sexy dream babes" or "make money online," anyone?).

So who wants to muck through all that sludge to get to the good weird stuff? WayOutAuctions.com, that's who. According to a news release, Way Out Auction founders Nick Puopolo and Sarah Hughes claim to cull the most outrageous and funniest eBay auctions for their site. And you don't have to wade through all that eBay boilerplate -- shipping charges, reserves, feedback -- because Way Out Auctions posts only photos and item descriptions.

But if you're actually interested in bidding on, say, the World's Most Offensive Bear (a series of anatomically correct talking Teddies that need their mouths washed out with soap), just click on the "View Auction" link, and you'll be taken right to the sale on eBay.

Among Way Out Auctions' recent finds:

A wounded Ninja apple: giving a whole new meaning to "an apple a day."

Mummified antique fish: a relic that also comes with a 2-inch-thick carved plank -- for display, not serving purposes, we guess.

Lucky black-eyed pea: This valiant little legume managed to survive not only dinnertime but also a spin in the dishwasher. We're waiting to hear that someone's picked up this inspiring story for a major motion picture starring Jake Gyllenhaal.

Stuffed dog bites terrorized child!: The mom selling this toy claims her 18-month-old turned up with a wound on his arm and the only explanation is that a stuffed canine, a Christmas present, has somehow come to life with nefarious intent, a la Chucky. If you win the auction, shipping's free, but you must promise not to "use it for any evil."

Judith H. Bernstein

You can find just about anything on eBay. Clothes, furniture and Route 66 landmarks. Now, you can even find Tulsa's beloved Rose Bowl building up for bid online.

If you've got half-a-million bucks lying around, News on 6 business reporter Steve Berg says you can own a piece of history.

The next item up for bid, one used, slightly scorched, bowling alley. Can't be used for a bowling alley anymore as part of a deal with the previous owners, but 34,000 square feet of a very unique, very famous local landmark.

So what do you think? "Selling it on eBay you mean? Why not, they do everything else on the Internet." Dennis Park, who has a business nearby, says he used to play in a company bowling league there years ago. So far though, zero bidders. "I can't imagine anybody buying it on eBay, but there'll be a lot of lookers I guess."

So would he be in the market himself? "Half a million." Steve Berg: "Actually, $499,000." Dennis Park: “keep it under that $500,000 I guess. I dunno, good luck to him."

"We'd go over there and bowl and I'd take my sons and my stepkids and we'd go over there and bowl and it was a pretty nice little place to go until they sold it." Bill Umbell's car shop is right across the street from the Rose Bowl. He'd like to see somebody make use of it. "I hope that whoever does, its going to be good for 11th street, because like I say, right now 11th street needs help right now."

Dennis Park: “I thought it had been resolved. I thought whoever bought that thing was going to use it themselves."

The owner says he's just trying to gauge the interest in the building. He says if he found the right buyer, he'd sell, but he might still try to develop it himself. And he says he's still wants to avoid tearing it down.

    & ldquo;I thought it was really a lack of a sense of humor,” said Patterson. “That it was more important because the money went to Children’s Hospital, I feel they could have been a bit more generous about it.”

By Dawn Witlin

Interested in a piece of driftwood from Hurricane Katrina? How about bottled flood water, or maybe a prickly palm seabean that washed ashore?

Maybe your taste is more toward a flood-damaged dollar bill. The asking price is $2,900 for this piece of history.

These are just some of the hundreds of Hurricane Katrina-related items - much of it rather mundane - being sold on eBay.

Finding them is easy. Enter the search term "Hurricane Katrina" and more than 550 items are listed. Many of those are, however, duplicate entries. Still it gives a sense of just how much is out there.

Many of the items for sale are publications - magazines and newspapers - with stories about the hurricane. One seller is offering a week's worth of Sun Herald newspapers, starting with the issue of Aug. 30. The newspaper never missed a day in print, despite the storm.

"They are sure to be a collectors item in the future since they are so rare," the description says.

There are copies of the special issues of Time and Newsweek, as well as DVDs about the hurricane aired by Nova and National Geographic.

Many of the items for sale are not linked to the hurricane, save for claiming proceeds will be used in part or in whole for relief efforts.

Items for sale include rap music, a glossy satellite photo of Hurricane Katrina, a Katrina bracelet, coins, caps, patches, photos of damaged casinos and more.

Last week some driftwood found in Alabama was, according to the seller, believed to have been brought in by Katrina. It couldn't be found Monday.

Another seller describes a one-inch item - there's a photo showing it next to a ruler - as "what I think is a prickly palm seabean." It was found after Katrina on Galveston Island, Texas.

Starting bid is $8 for the bean being sold "as is" on eBay.

Another seller has a dollar that was found in Louisiana and is being pushed as a Katrina artifact. It was wet and had marks and "effects of hurricane on it," said the description. It has a money-back guarantee if proved unauthentic by any appraisal company.

The price is $2,900, but so far it doesn't appear that anyone has placed a bid.

Another seller is offering "actual flood water from Plaquemines Parish in Louisiana... . The floodwater has been preserved in a Niagara drinking water bottle. There is 16.9 ozs of groundbreaking history," says the description.

The bid Monday was $1.

If you are taken aback by how dingy the water looks, not to fear. "Note: The stuff in the water will settle with time," promises the description.

Perhaps there's another valuable dollar in there.

It's the cry that makes many a chap shudder with shame.

After an hour and a half in front of the screen and keyboard, Maria was entitled to ask and I had to confess.

After all, the last time the results of my surfing the web had dropped through the letterbox in the post and she had held up a picture of a lady in déshabillé and said: "What are these?"

"I don't know what came over me, honest. I just saw them and had to have them," I said.

And it's true.

It's like an addiction when you go onto the internet auction house ebay. My excuse was that I was doing research about Bamforth postcards. I intended to write a piece about their enduring popularity.

Then I saw an offer too good to turn down and, before I knew it, I had bought a pack of 60 of Bamforth's sauciest seaside fun. Quickly followed by another batch of 20.

And it's only a few weeks ago I bought a sewing machine from ebay.

"Your retirement's going to be fun," Maria said. "Collecting postcards and running up curtains."

Then I bought a glove puppet and a Charlotte Church CD and this week I had to confess that I had put in a successful bid for a pair of women's jogging pants, new, size 12.

"I'm size 10 and I don't jog," she said.

"But they were only £1.95 and I thought they might fit me."

Yes, even I admit that sounds strange.

I will just have to stay away from ebay, at least for a while, even though it is so tempting to log on and see what is on offer.

And did you know that the last time I looked under postcards, there were 1,106 lots on offer?

Perhaps I'll check again next week. Or when Maria has gone to the shop.

Four years after becoming the first town auctioned on eBay, this tiny California town is once again for sale on the Web site.

Bruce Krall, an Orange County financial broker who bought the 83-acre hamlet for $700,000, is seeking a minimum bid of $1.75 million for the riverfront property.

Krall said Sunday that he had wanted to turn Bridgeville into a retreat center, but family issues forced him to abandon the effort days after he got building permits.

Included in the deal are three cows, a 136-year-old post office, a vacant cafe and a cemetery. Bidding is set to begin April 4.

This is the third time that Bridgeville, located 260 miles north of San Francisco, has been put up for sale in recent years.

Chicago Tribune

Maggie Potenza is turning other people's stuff into cash in the pocket, all via eBay.

For Potenza, owner of Truelife Finds along Route 209 just outside of Milford, other folks' junk is as good as gold.

Her busy store is loaded with stuff to be sold on consignment - everything from shoes to old jewelry and kids' toys. But the real gold is in the back - a whole room full of items she's selling on eBay for their owners.

It's a simple idea: People bring in stuff they don't need or want anymore, Potenza figures out if it's worth anything and then offers it for sale or auction on the popular Web site.

She gets a commission if the item sells and gets to keep the small deposit customers put down if it doesn't.

Sounds like an unlikely way to make a living? It's not.

According to eBay, more than 700,000 people make their primary living doing just what Potenza does, and another 1.5 million do it at least part time.

The company, with 181 million registered users worldwide, posted 2005 revenues of more than $2 billion, selling more than $44 billion worth of merchandise.

"I've had buyers from all over the world," she said, poring over a pile of old Captain America comic books she's getting ready to offer. "And every time I turn around, people are bringing in more stuff."

Potenza's eBay adventure started about a year ago, she said. Her husband, Fred, closed his Nyack, N.Y., kite and toy store and brought much of his inventory back to the couple's home.

Faced with a basement full of unwanted items, Fred suggested his wife try to sell some of it on eBay. She resisted at first.

"But after the first sale, I was hooked," she said.

Her first foray into selling other people's stuff netted her a dashboard from an old Chevy and a pair of racecar seats. Both sold. And Potenza's business dream became a reality.

Now, she has a cadre of dozens of sellers feeding her items and has made thousands of dollars for them - and for herself - since her store opened in November.

Not surprisingly, Potenza's a big eBay booster.

She sports an eBay T-Shirt and even plans to offer classes to other people interested in following her example.

By Dave Richardson

Moments before a weeklong eBay auction ended Saturday night, GoldenPalace.com, an Antigua-based company, submitted a bid of $7,099.99 for a ceramic bowl decorated by comedian Richard Pryor.

All of the money goes to the animal welfare organization that operates the Rescue Village shelter in Russell Township.

Jeff Kay, a spokesman for GoldenPalace.com, placed the winning bid himself.

"I'm really happy we got this one," Kay said. "Not only for the press [exposure], but for the cause."

Kay said the online casino is putting together a traveling museum, and the bowl is an important addition.

Pryor donated the bowl to the Humane Society weeks before he died Dec. 10 at age 65. He painted a self-portrait inside the bowl and wrote "Little Black Man in Big White World."

The side of the bowl contains Pryor's signature and drawings of a martini glass, lips and a cigarette.

The Humane Society offered to return the bowl to Pryor's widow after his death. But Jennifer Pryor told the group to keep the piece and use it to generate as much money as possible for the animals.

Pryor worked tirelessly as an advocate for animals during his life.

The auction attracted international attention, a testament to the comedian's star power. Sharon Harvey, executive director of the Humane Society, said everyone, including Jennifer Pryor, was thrilled with the outcome.

"This bowl is a piece of Americana now," Harvey said. "We're delighted it's going to someone who's going to show it to lots of people."

At nine o'clock tomorrow night, Korean War veteran Dolph Overton will know if there's someone out there willing to pay nearly three million dollars over the Internet for an airplane.Of course, it's not just any airplane. The former fighter pilot from Smithfield is selling his 1929 Ford Tri-Motor, putting the antique passenger plane up for bid on e-Bay.

Ford made fewer than 200 of the planes, which were the first all-metal airplanes manufactured in the United States.

The 80-year-old Overton has owned dozen of planes, but after having two strokes, he can't fly anymore. So the plane that's always been his favorite is up for sale, and will go to a new owner if the bidding reaches at least two-point-seven million dollars.

If the bidding does get that high, Overton plans to use the money to pay for the college education of his ten grandchildren.

Nearly two years after he bought the tiny town of Bridgeville, Orange County financial adviser Bruce Krall said Friday he plans to re-auction the Humboldt County hamlet on eBay next month.

"Due to family reasons, I'm pretty much tied to Southern California for the foreseeable future," Krall told The Associated Press. "We can't move up there. It only makes sense to pass it on to somebody else."

Krall said the auction will open on April 4 with a minimum bid of $1.75 million - more than twice what he paid for the 83-acre property about 40 miles southwest of Eureka.

Bridgeville, a picturesque village with about 25 people on the Van Duzen River, sparked a bidding war in 2002 when it became the first town ever put up for sale on eBay.

The buyer, who won the auction with a $1.78 million bid, never came to see the property and the deal fell through. The property was eventually posted on traditional real estate listings, and Krall bought it for about $700,000 in May 2004.

Since then Krall said he's invested "multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars" to restore old buildings, remove dilapidated structures and clean up mounds of garbage. He also found new tenants for the houses and received a conditional use permit for a riverfront resort.

"It's come full circle," Krall said. "Now it's been fixed up, and I think it's actually ready to be sold on eBay."

The latest bizarre episode in the eBay universe is potentially one of the saddest. A Cleveland woman posted an ad asking someone to provide a home for her and her children so that they could escape what the woman described as an abusive husband.

"This relationship can be what you want it to be," the ad read. "It can be casual or friendlier which could lead into marriage if we see fit whatever would benefit my children and of course you and me."

In response to a barrage of angry e-mails, the woman tried to explain herself in another posting.

"I am strictly looking for a decent, loving and kind man who can give us love and a nice home and take us away from all this turmoil," the woman said. "I am a wonderful person and mom, I know this seems unusual to post an ad like this but it is better then the bar scene."

The auction Web site pulled the posting, saying it went against its policy.

"It is a violation of our prohibited services policy … which includes no virtual relationships," said Catherine England, a company spokeswoman. "We have the policy in place to protect our community members. EBay strives to have a clean and transparent marketplace."

Auctions for Prom Dates and Ghosts

This wasn't the first attempt at selling a person on the Internet's largest auction site.

EBay agreed this week to pull another controversial ad off its Web site. The ad offered the friendship of a 16-year-old Houston girl to the highest bidder.

In March 2005, Stu Hemesath reportedly took Rachel Kay to her senior prom in Cedar Falls, Iowa, after Rachel had placed the winning bid for Stu on eBay for $29.95. The price didn't cover the limo and flowers.

And in December 2004, a 6-year-old boy in Hobart, Ind., apparently asked his mother to sell his grandfather's ghost on eBay. The boy, Collin Anderson, had reportedly been afraid the ghost might return someday to cause him trouble.

The seller, who wishes to remain anonymous (for fears her 15 minutes might be affected), says, "I thought I might as well sell it to somebody who could really use it."

Her spokesman Doug Garrison says, "If we divulge her name to the media, it would use up some of her fame time."

eBay said it has no problem with someone selling a car that once belonged to one of the gunmen in the Columbine High School killings.

But the online auction site said it does have a problem with the owner playing up that fact in his listing for the sale. eBay said if the owner wanted to sell the car that would have been fine -- but the owner would have to do so without mentioning that it was once owned by Dylan Klebold.

An eBay spokesman will not say whether the company will take any action against the would-be seller, who said in his listing that he didn't know the vehicle's history when it bought the 1982 BMW -- but once he did, he listed it on the site.

The vehicle was impounded after the crime -- but returned to the Klebold family a little over a year after the shootings…
 
Now, that is back on the market..

The unidentified sellers of the 1982 BMW 320i set up a Web site -- www.BuyKleboldsBMW.com -- and put the car up for sale. The online auction is supposed to end on April 20, the seventh anniversary of the Columbine school shootings.

On the new Web site, the sellers said they were aware of the history of the car but were not trying to make money off of other people's pain.

"We are not trivializing the incident or disrespecting the victims or their families. We feel deeply for all of the victims … That being said, we're not going to burn the car or trash it in any other way simply because we're not rich enough to buy a car and just trash it. Whoever buys this car can do whatever they want with it. It was the car that Klebold and Harris drove to the high school in that day with their bombs, guns, and ammo," the Web site said.

The sellers, who said they live in the Denver area, acknowledged that they've gotten complaints about their attempts to sell the car and said they might post some of the e-mails they've received.

"If we get enough hate mail over it, we might have to post a 'Best Of' section cause frankly, some of you people are hilarious. Happy Bidding!" their Web site stated.

eBay pulled the auction from its site on Monday because it violated eBay's policy on "murderabilia."

A copy of the car's title that was posted on the Web site showed that it was donated by Klebold's parents to Vehicles for Charity and then sold at auction.

Klebold and Eric Harris drove the car to Columbine High School on the morning of the rampage, leaving two 20-pound propane tank bombs, fuses and seven pipe bombs in it, according to investigative reports. The explosive devices were defused by bomb experts after the school shooting that left 12 students and a teacher dead at the hands of the two gunmen. Klebold and Harris took their own lives at the end of the rampage.

For $24,500 you could buy a used Porsche on eBay, or sponsor almost 1,000 children in Africa for a month through World Vision.

Or you could place a bid for the make-believe leadership of the Liberal party in a spoof Internet auction run by CBC comedian Rick Mercer.

By yesterday afternoon, Mercer's mock Liberal 'leadership' auction on eBay had garnered 72 bids -- with the leading one at $24,500.

Mercer is offering a 15-minute conference call with his writing staff to help craft a campaign message and also guarantees use of a colour printer -- one running low on magenta ink -- for producing campaign material.

Fifteen minutes and one mediocre printer should do the job, says Mercer.

Would-be Liberal leaders may face a challenger in Brad Barnett of Gatineau. He's the identified bidder who offered the $24,500.

However, he was quickly surpassed by a someone calling themselves Belinda Stronach, who bid $100,000. Barnett later topped that with an offer of $250,000.

The Canadian men's hockey team fizzled on the ice at the Olympics in Turin, Italy, but the group has scored big for a great cause.

Hockey Canada has again teamed up with EBay Canada to auction game-worn Team Canada hockey jerseys the guys wore at the Olympics. Three jerseys were worn by each Team Canada player at the Winter Olympics -- one black, one red and one white. The 22 jerseys up for grabs are the black ones worn in two games: Feb. 16 against Germany and Feb. 21 against the Czech Republic. Fans can bid on the jerseys until March 10. Proceeds will go to cover costs associated with the preparation and execution expenses of both hockey and sledge hockey teams for the Turin Games and Paralympics.

Check the Hockey Canada website at www.hockeycanada.ca or www.ebay.ca.

And standing in line at the busy security checkpoint at the Portland International Airport, you probably didn't have much choice: leave it behind or miss your flight.

So you parted with that pocketknife, pair of scissors or screwdriver and went on your way, knowing you can always buy another one.

It's a scenario repeated hundreds of times a year at PDX, and until recently, few people knew where all those items now considered unsafe for plane travel ended up.

It wasn't in a dumpster, that's for sure.

More than likely, your Swiss Army knife, Snap-On screwdriver or knitting needles are up for bid on the internet auction site eBay, being sold by the city of Portland, along with dozens of stolen bicycles, computer equipment and other items that end up in the city's property rooms.

City of Portland and State of Oregon officials have adopted the practice of selling items on eBay in a big way.

The city and state have multiple eBay accounts for selling everything from confiscated scissors to tanker trucks.

A quick search Thursday turned up hundreds of items ranging from a box full of kitchen knives to a late-model snowmobile to surplus maintenance vehicles.

Initial prices are extremely low, so most of the items had multiple bids.

Terry Brooks of the Oregon State Surplus Program says stolen property and surplus items come into a Salem warehouse, are sorted, labeled and then placed on eBay for sale to the public.

Some of the most popular items sold by the city on eBay are bicycles.

Portland is well-known as a cycle-friendly town, and the large number of bikes means a large number get stolen as well.

Tye Routley oversees the stolen property room in Portland, and says he sees all kinds of bikes come through his facility, from boxes of parts to full-on race bikes.

Many bikes listed by the city that sell on eBay for about $50 cost well over $400 when they were new.

A pair of kids BMX bikes and a pair of name-brand mountain bikes both had a starting bid price of just 99 cents.

Routley says the city always tries to reunite bikes with owners, but if an owner does not have a serial number or does not report their bike stolen, he has no choice but to list the bike for sale online.

In 2004, eBay sales sent over $70,000 to the state's general fund, all of it from the sale of confiscated or stolen items that were never claimed.

Sales figures for 2005 were not yet available.

The next time you make an online purchase -- or online sale -- paying attention to the "plus shipping and handling" part of the transaction could save, cost or make you some extra bucks.

That's the upshot of a study by two professors who looked at how people react to the prices and shipping costs for items they put on the block at the eBay auction site. It turns out, according to their research, that people are a lot more likely to notice the basic cost of an item than to check the shipping charges.

The bottom line: Sellers can make more money if they charge a lower price for the item itself, but charge a bit more for the shipping fees, according to the study by UC Berkeley Haas School of Business professor John Morgan and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology assistant professor Tanjim Hossain.

"Setting a low opening bid and a high shipping and handling cost yield systematically higher revenue than doing the reverse," Morgan and Hossain wrote.

Why does this happen? Why don't people look at the entire price? The answers may lie in part in how people process financial costs involved in negotiations.

"My preferred explanation is people keep separate mental accounts for different aspects of a purchase," Morgan said. "People keep a kind of mental account for the purchase itself and put that in one silo, and they keep a separate mental account for the shipping charges and put that in another silo."

The professors conducted several auctions to compare what happened when the opening bid was low and shipping charges high to auctions when the bid was high and the shipping charges low.

In three out of four experiments, a lower opening bid and higher shipping charge generated more revenue than when opening bids were high and shipping charges were low.

For example, the professors auctioned 10 video games for the Xbox console. In one experiment -- where the opening bid was set at a relatively low level and the shipping charges at a relatively high level -- the average revenue for the auction was $41.06. That was 11 percent higher than the average revenue of $36.95 for instances with higher opening bids and lower shipping charges.

In one instance, of selling music CDs, low item prices and high shipping costs produced 34 percent more revenue.

But it doesn't always happen that way. In auctions of music CDs, which tend to cost quite a bit less than video games, it was difficult to get away with shipping charges that greatly exceeded the cost of the CD. When there was a real disparity, such as an opening bid of $2 and a shipping charge of $6, average revenues when the shipping charges were high fell 3 percent below the high-bid, low-shipping scenario.

"When we jacked up the shipping charges to $6, a lot of people perceived us as being crooks," Morgan said.

Morgan compares it to a $400 upgraded sound system that somebody might add to an automobile. People are more willing to pay that fee on top of the purchase of a $20,000 vehicle. But they would be more likely to balk if the $400 upgrade was in addition to an oil change.

"It's a pretty natural thing to just focus on the price," said Jennifer Brown, an economist and graduate student with UC Berkeley's Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics. Brown co-wrote a separate study that found that an auction of identical coins produced 60 percent more bidders on the eBay site than on the Yahoo! auctions site, and 30 percent higher revenue.

Matters have become more transparent on the eBay site. To help consumers, the company recently organized searches so shipping charges appear along with the item cost when the search results appear, said Catherine England, a spokeswoman for San Jose-based eBay Inc.

"We also have a policy against excessive shipping charges," England said. "But that's a gray area. If we get complaints about excessive shipping fees, we would pull that item from the site."

Ultimately, it's up to buyers to beware.

"The lesson for consumers is clear," Morgan said. "You want to pay attention

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