One of Andy Warhol's signature silver wigs has sold for $10,800 on eBay.

The hairpiece - complete with three stripes of toupee tape on the inside - was worn by the artist around 1980. It had been expected to fetch up to $6,000 dollars at Christie's in New York.

Warhol began wearing the hairpieces in the early 1960s, and they eventually turned from a mere cover-up for his baldness into fashion accessories.

The wig was one of several lots being sold by Jeffrey Warhola, the artist's nephew.

The city of Elmira may join the online auction craze this month by offering the small carousel at Dunn Field on eBay.

The council plans to vote Monday night to put the carousel on the online auction site with a minimum bid of $40,000.

The city purchased the piece in 2001 for about $75,000, said City Manager John Burin.

"It was there (at Dunn Field) but it really wasn't used," Burin said. "I don't know really why it was even put there in the first place. Whatever the reason ... it didn't work."

In 2005, the council had discussed selling the miniature carousel that was purchased to provide more of a family atmosphere at Dunn Field. Officials have said the carousel is underutilized.

Elmira Pioneers General Manager Tom Sullivan said the carousel had not been in use this summer and he was unsure as to why.

"The carousel is not being operated at the field. It just wasn't used enough," Sullivan said.

Charlie Shaffer, deputy director of the city's Department of Public Works, said the carousel is about 20 feet in diameter and includes 14 animals and one small sleigh seat and is in good condition.

Shaffer said he thinks the eBay sale is a good idea for the city.

"It hasn't been in use," he said. "I think it's a better use to sell it to someone who will get some use out of it and return some of that money to the city."

Burin said the money from the sale of the carousel will be used in the city's general fund and $30,000 has already been put in the 2006 city budget from the sale of the carousel.

"We'll put it on eBay to see if there is any interest out there for a carousel and try to get some money back to the city," Burin said.

Mayor John Tonello said exploring eBay's potential to sell the city-owned merry-go-round came out of the council's budget talks.

"To me it's an ideal way to reach people who are interested in quirky things," Tonello said.

City Chamberlain Joy Bates said the concept makes sense for the city.

"EBay offers us a wider chance to find someone who wanted (a carousel). It's just a better use of current technology," she said.

British driver, James Wingfield, has divided his car up into ten advertising opportunities and is auctioning them off one by one.

Wingfield presently lies second in the Formula Palmer Audio championship behind Viktor Jensen who – for all the old foggies out there – is the son of former Radio One DJ, David 'Kid' Jensen.

Since Jensen is technically Icelandic, Wingfield is claiming to be the leading British driver. If that doesn't work he's going to try claiming he's Egyptian.

Anyway, James better get his skates on because the Ebay auction finishes this Friday, 23rd June and the next race, the Brands Hatch Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters, starts on 30th June.

Winfield probably stands a better chance than fellow Brit, Charlotte Kerwood, who despite having won two gold medals is struggling to find sponsorship. Kerwood won the medals for the very non-PC sport of clay pigeon shooting.

Users of eBay are getting new ways to tout their wares and coach one another on how to use the auction Web site.

EBay Inc. has created eBay Wiki, a collaboratively written repository on hundreds of topics relating to trading on the site. Unlike forums, in which members respond to previous posts with new messages, wikis let anyone add, delete or change any item, so that the end result appears as a collaborative narrative.

Rachel Makool, the company's senior director of community development, said eBay wanted to lend more structure to member communication and make it easier to search for particular topics.

The company also said it will host blogs for members, going beyond the "about me" pages that users can offer with links to outside blogs.

She said the blogs are meant to make members "more comfortable with each other." For example, she said, by putting their pictures on eBay blogs, sellers might make buyers more confident about potential transactions.

The wiki is being created for the site by JotSpot Inc., whose founder, Joe Kraus, said few other consumer sites have embraced wikis so aggressively.

"This is wiki's coming of age in a way, and the beginning of what will be a trend," he said.

_ Brian Bergstein, AP Technology Writer.

The adult fantasyland of Las Vegas seems a fitting place for eBay to have a middle-age crisis, especially with the mercury hovering at 100 degrees here as some 15,000 sellers stream into the city for the Internet auctioneer's fifth annual user convention.

The Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. (Leslie Walker-The Washington Post) That's what I thought Monday as I took a cab from the Las Vegas airport to the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino. The "eBay Live" convention opens here Tuesday and ends Thursday with a gala dinner featuring Huey Lewis & the News.

EBay turns 11 this fall. Its revenue growth is slowing, its stock price continues to slide and its rivalry with Google is intensifying. No wonder Ebay Inc. chief executive Meg Whitman has been touting a new vision for the company in talks with Wall Street analysts.

The question on my mind is: What will the merchants who helped make eBay a giant of Internet commerce think of its grand plans to move into advertising, financial services and voice communications?

EBay's mercurial merchants have never been shy about telling the firm when they think its fees are out of line, or its software is too glitchy, or its customer service is missing in action. I'm sure they'll be giving Whitman and her team an earful this week.

Whitman will be describing her goals in a keynote address Tuesday night. She may also touch on them at the company's annual shareholder's meeting here Tuesday morning.

Legendary Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop Honus Wagner grew up in Carnegie, and now people have a chance to own his childhood house.

Wagner Carnegie Inc., which owns the property, is putting the home on Beechwood Avenue up for auction on eBay.

The starting bid: $195,000.

The winning bidder also will get the home's original construction documents and a sale contract signed by Wagner.
 
Wagner moved into the house in 1918 and died in 1955.

The owners wanted to turn it into a bed and breakfast, but Borough officials rejected that plan.

The auction begins at 10 p.m. Friday on eBay.

A ONE-LEGGED driver is selling his false leg on eBay to pay a parking fine.

Peter Stapleton, 50, who lost his leg in a motorbike accident 30 years ago, got the £200 ticket in London after the prosthetic fell off while he was driving.

He said a traffic warden told him he would not be fined while he went a friend's flat in Camden to fix the problem.

Peter, of Dunstable, Bedfordshire, added: "It doesn't fit anyway - but makes a nice plant pot holder."

The seller of the invitation told TMZ.com his business, 24/7 Auctions, got it from a female guest with "relations to the groom's family."

GoldenPalace.com will mostly like add the invitation to the Sept. 18, 2004, ceremony to its Spears collection -- which includes the singer's home pregnancy test, her pacifier from when she was a baby and a half-full bottle of water left behind at the hospital where she gave birth to her son, Sean Preston, TMZ.com noted.

Tony Gellepis, 85, recalls the night he was on liberty, and even the bar he was in when he took off the double-breasted dark blue coat with two rows of big black buttons.

He was astounded earlier this year when his son, Jim, wrote from his home in Tallahassee, Fla., saying he had done a Google search on the family name, and found the coat for sale on the eBay auction site, the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News reported.

The eBay listing said the coat was Size 38, "Marked on the inside with T.J. Gellepis."

The coat had been sold by the time the elder Gellepis learned of it, but his son tracked down the purchaser in Belgium.

The buyer was Danny De Block, who is expanding a World War II museum in Lokeren and plans to display the coat as part of a full Navy uniform. He has asked Gellepis to send his war story and a photo to include in the exhibit, the newspaper said.

Jay Heim Jr., 18, of Yellville has been hired by the technology division of eBay Inc. at Salt Lake City. Heim is the youngest person to be hired by the division.

Heim is the son of Jay Heim Sr. and Tammy Heim, both of Yellville. He is a 2005 graduate of Yellville-Summit High School. He attended North Arkansas Community College for some classes during high school and also completed a semester at Arkansas State University Mountain Home after graduation.
  
Heim is a database developer at eBay Inc.'s fraud department

eBay will be launching eBay Blogs to give sellers an opportunity to market themselves, and also plans to launch an eBay Community Wiki, AuctionBytes.com reports (via MicroPersuasion). Both will be officially launched at eBay Live, in Las Vegas, June 13-15. eBay is already using blogs and wikis internally, having changed its newsletter, "The Chatter," to a blog format, using SixApart's Typepad. Also, theBay Developers Conference has already set up a wiki.
 
"By launching blogs and wikis, eBay is taking a big step to push into the social commerce arena. Conversation drives commerce so integrating blogs, wikis and tags into the eBay toolkit is a natural extension to their core platform, which has long included discussion boards, writes Micro Persuasion's Steve Rubel.

"I would not be surprised to see the company take this a step further and build eBay into a giant social network that lets like-minded buyers and sellers find each other."

Celebrity spoon-bender Uri Geller has discovered that a former Elvis Presley house that Geller thought he bought on eBay has been sold to someone else, the BBC reported Saturday.

The Tennessee house has been sold to a foundation set up by music producer Mike Curb. "We are absolutely, mind-blown angry. Of course we're going to sue," Geller, whose winning bid was $905,100, told the BBC.

WHAT would you do if you suspect you were cheated by a seller on an Internet auction site?

In the case of university student Thomas Sawyer, he created a website to humiliate the seller after buying a 375 ($1,107) laptop that he claimed was faulty.

The website, entitled 'The Broken Laptop I Sold on eBay', features embarrassing pictures of seller Amir Tofangsazan that Mr Sawyer gleaned from the laptop after he repaired it.

Speaking to The Daily Mail, Mr Sawyer, 23, said that he bought the laptop from Mr Amir on eBay last year, but claimed it wasn't working when he received it in the mail almost two months after he sent the money.

He added that Mr Amir, an 18-year-old A-level student from North London, refused to give him a refund.

When Mr Sawyer had the laptop repaired, he found that its hard drive contained all sorts of embarrassing information about Mr Amir.
Among the photographs he found on the laptop were ones of Mr Amir bare-chested, kissing a girl, and shots of his passport, along with pornographic images and about 90 pictures of women's legs that had apparently been taken on trains with a camera phone.

ONE MILLION VISITORS

The university student from Exeter, who has been dubbed the 'eBay avenger', decided to take revenge by posting the pictures on a mock blog that details the sale of the laptop from Mr Amir's perspective.

The blog has since received over one million visitors.

Mr Amir has claimed that the laptop was not broken when he shipped it, and that the pornographic images and pictures of legs had nothing to do with him, reported The Daily Mail.

He added that he had been forced to go into hiding since the website was made public because of threatening and racist phone calls.

This is apparently not the first time that Mr Amir may have duped someone.

Police are investigating at least one other scam where a buyer allegedly paid Mr Amir 147 for an Apple iPod music player that never arrived.

Despite the investigations against him, Mr Amir has threatened to sue Mr Sawyer for libel for creating the website.

However, Mr Sawyer isn't fazed.

'I still have the laptop and would be happy to hand it over to police if requested to,' he said.

Mr Sawyer has offered to take down the website if Mr Amir apologises and gives him a refund for the laptop.

Mr Amir has refused to comment on the offer

In the "strategic partnership" announced last week, Yahoo and eBay say the four major components are: search and graphical advertising; online payments; a co-branded toolbar; and the opportunity to explore "click-to-call" functionality using eBay's Skype internet-based voice telephony service.

But the core of the deal is eBay will allow Yahoo to sell banner ads and contextual search ads on eBay pages in the US (and share the money), while Yahoo will adopt eBay's PayPal system for making payments.

The advertising will have to be done carefully, or eBay sellers will go bananas. John Donahoe, president of eBay Marketplaces, told the San Francisco Chronicle the ads will be for complementary products so as not to compete with sellers. If you search for compost, for example, you might get ads for plants, spades or wheelbarrows etc.

In its last financial quarter, only $36.6m of eBay's $1.39bn revenue came from advertising as opposed to auction-related fees, so there would seem to be a large financial opportunity. Presumably this explains why other elements of the deal - PayPal and Skype - seem to favour eBay.

However, the partnership falls short of eBay's real desires, in that Yahoo's auctions site will continue to compete with eBay. And because of the traffic Yahoo gets, eBay has always seen this as a serious threat. Of course, if all goes well, eBay could simply take over Yahoo's auction business.