A Winnipeg shop is selling a U.S. coin with an unusual mark that resembles the devil on eBay.

The perceived image on the 2001 penny, which vaguely suggests a demon's face complete with horns, appears to the right of Abraham Lincoln and cuts across his right eye.

"It's an image of what some people would call evil of some sort, or a demon," said Sheldon Sturrey, manager at Collectibles Canada. "It's not a friendly image. It doesn't give you warm, happy feelings."

Sturrey posted the penny on EBay last week and is selling it on consignment for the owner, who wants to remain anonymous.

According to a written description on eBay that accompanies photos of the penny, the coin was found on the ground in northwestern Manitoba and produces "a strange, warm feeling" when someone holds it in their hand.

Sturrey said the devilish mark isn't just natural corrosion. He also said it would be nearly impossible for someone to create such a mark on purpose using a corrosive liquid.

"It has this weird shape on it but whether it's possessed or not, I don't know," he said. "I'm not a believer in that kind of thing."

Still, Sturrey said the store's computer did crash a couple of times while an employee was trying to post the item online.

A John Mark Karr doll with leather pants.

A red car "pimped out" with Karr's mug.

 And a 129-page journal written by Wendy Wonda Pearl Hutchens about infamous friends including Karr, the suspect in JonBenet Ramsey's 1996 killing.

These are among a growing list of items recently sold or now for sale on eBay.

"This is just the beginning of the merchandizing and marketing of John Mark Karr," said Andy Kahan, a watchdog of "murderabilia."

Kahan, the director of victim services for Houston Mayor Bill White, said profiteers usually wait until a killer is convicted before making T-shirts and serial killer action figures.

But professional marketers and people just hoping to make a quick buck see a tremendous opportunity in the Ramsey story and are already out in force, Kahan said.

He has tried unsuccessfully to get eBay to prohibit such items, but he said company officials argue they are not the morality police. As a result, the murderabilia market flourishes, he said.

According to a policy statement posted online, eBay prohibits selling of "offensive materials."

Violators' listings could be canceled or their accounts suspended, according to the eBay Web site.

Hani Durzy, eBay spokesman, said the company would not allow someone to sell an item on eBay marketed as a past possession of a murderer.

The fact that Karr is merely a suspect complicates the issue, he said. The eBay policy-review team may have to consider items involving accused people, he said.

Well, I'm not sure if it's really an art collection, but according to MSNBC, Michael Jackson owes considerable sums to an art gallery. The owner of the gallery is trying to figure out ways to get his money back. How? Why, eBay of course.

Michael Jackson asked the gallery to frame two mural portraits of himself as well as prints of Norman Rockwell -- all of children at play (ahem). The portraits are apparently enormous and one of them is of the singer "frolicking with Peter Pan and another of him dancing in a rainbow of colors." (Did I say ahem?)

The frustrated gallery owner doesn't know what to do with the portraits other than perhaps putting them on eBay, where everything seems to end up...

Legendary singer LIiza MIinnelli thrilled a fan when she stopped for a post-show snack in New York by giving him her leftover french fries. Minnelli was performing in Coney Island when she stopped at Nathan's Famous for one of their legendary hot dogs. According to New York Post's Page Six, the star puffed on a cigarette and chatted with the crowd while munching on a hot dog and fries. Before she left, she handed over her leftovers to a gay male admirer who was thrilled with his souvenir. Minnelli jokingly asked if she would be seeing the fries for sale on Internet auction site eBay. The fan gasped and shrieked, "Never".

When does a $2.33 transaction turn into a superior court case? When it happens on eBay.

 A dispute over a piece of smoky quartz normally would have been of little consequence to Kiel Sturm, who was selling the stone on eBay. But when a buyer made defamatory remarks that threatened to forever mar Sturm's online reputation, Sturm began a yearlong legal battle to get the comments removed from eBay.

The squabble is an example of how user feedback on such sites can force ordinary people into time-consuming court proceedings to defend their reputations against remarks that can damage their business, because the comments remain online.

EBay has built itself into the world's largest online marketplace in large part because of trust created by feedback from users.

But a problem arises if a review is false. How does an Internet company separate unpleasant truths from defamatory lies? Most companies choose to let the courts decide.

EBay will not remove feedback unless it receives a court order finding that the disputed feedback is ``slanderous, libelous, defamatory, or otherwise illegal."

But in Sturm's case, eBay's goal of maintaining a reliable record through feedback of how transactions have gone had an unintended consequence: To clear his reputation, Sturm said he was forced into a string of lawsuits.

It finally took a third suit directly against eBay in Santa Clara County Superior Court. Sturm argued that eBay was guilty of libel for publishing defamatory remarks.

EBay got the case dismissed, but Sturm said he won anyway. About a week after he filed the third lawsuit, eBay finally took down the feedback in question.

``We went to the court and got a confirmation of the order," said Hani Durzy, an eBay spokesman. ``We didn't take it down because he sued us."

After five years of selling on eBay, Sturm said he now does most of his gem sales face to face

EBAY has been used to try to sell everything from Jordan's breast implants to a student's virginity. Now, in perhaps the most bizarre auction to date, a baby has been put up for sale by her mother.

Except she probably hasn't. In what appears to be a prank, the two-month-old girl was offered on the auction site at a starting bid of 1p.

It has attracted no bidders - but it has drawn the attention of the police. Selling a baby on a website, as every parent presumably knows, is illegal under human-trafficking laws.

The auction began last Tuesday under a heading of "Baby for Sale - unwanted - already have two. 1p start!" The seller, named only as Charlie, stated: "UNWANTED BABY! It's a girl of two months, comes with full history since birth.

"Drinks lots of milk and is very smiley. I do not want it. Its messey (sic) and smells a lot. Bid now before I flush it down the toilet." She adds: "No returns!!!"

Although intended in jest, eBay has failed to see the funny side. A spokesman said: "The police have been informed as a precaution."

The Met, which has a dedicated liaison team who work specifically with eBay to clamp down on internet fraud, said: "If we are contacted about such an item we have to investigate to determine whether this was a prank or not."

Even if it's in the name of a good cause, electroclash sexpot Peaches can't sell her dirty thong on eBay.

The auction site yanked a pair of Peaches' dirty underwear that had been donated to help raise money for Three Gut Records' Tyler Clark Burke, who's attempting to raise funds to purchase a house after being struck with severe health problems. Heck, Peaches and Three Gut even planned to give Habitat for Humanity a 20-percent cut of the spoils, too.

eBay swooped in and put a halt to the auction, which violates a blanket ban on auctioning off dirty underwear on the site.

EBay plans later this month to begin testing a redesign of its search results pages that will contain more information for each listed item and will sport a new look and layout.

The online marketplace hopes the changes will enhance the shopping experience for buyers, wrote Nico Posner, a senior product manager, in an official announcement posted Tuesday on eBay’s website.

Specifically, search results will be bigger and price information will be highlighted with larger type and a new color. Each listing will have a button so buyers can save it to a "watch list." Most listings will also have a link labeled "see quick details" that, if hovered over or clicked on, will show information like shipping and handling charges and accepted payment methods.

A small percentage of randomly selected buyers will begin seeing the new search results pages later this month. EBay will reveal its plans for a wider rollout of this new design once the testing period ends.

Last year, eBay announced its intention to test new search functionality it called Magellan. "Finding is incredibly important on eBay. The more effective we can make finding, the higher the [sales] conversion rates and the more robust the marketplace is for buyers and sellers," said President and Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman in July 2005 regarding Magellan.

In May of this year, eBay struck a wide-ranging partnership with Yahoo, which in part calls for the companies to collaborate on search technology and advertising.

It isn’t clear whether the new redesign of the search results page is related to the Magellan effort and to the Yahoo partnership. EBay didn’t immediately reply to a request seeking comment.

The partnership with Yahoo was widely seen as a defensive move by both vendors against common rival Google. Google is using its leadership position in search to expand into the Web portal space, which is Yahoo’s core territory, and into the product listings and online payment market, eBay’s stomping ground.

EBay is also fighting internal demons. Last month, eBay executives said during a conference call that core marketplace revenue and gross merchandise volume should have grown more in the second quarter, which ended June 30.

They blamed an imbalance between eBay’s traditional product listings, which include both auction and fixed-priced products, and store inventory listings, which on average now make up 83 percent of active marketplace listings. To correct the imbalance, eBay is marketing traditional product listings more aggressively and raising store listing fees, never a popular move with sellers.

There have been some bizarre auctions on eBay over the years, but none more crazy than fish-slapping.

Yes, you can bid to slap a man in the face with a fish, and it's all for charity.

The fish can be of your choosing, but it must be fresh and not frozen.

The fish can be of your choosing

The winning bidder will only get to perform one slap.

The man in question is 24-year-old Ben Fillmore whose mission is to raise £10,000 for the UK Stroke Association charity.

The fishy event will take place at Speaker's Corner on Hyde Park in London on Saturday 19 August.

The top bid so far is £16.

In other eBay news, businesses are boycotting the site in protest at new rules that disallow them to be listed at the top of searches. They are also angry at fee increases.

500 or so businesses have registered their disgust in an online petition.

Dan Wilson, the community manager for eBay, said the site was being overloaded with professional shops selling goods.

The protest in Britain follows that started in the US, Canada, Australia, Spain and France.

WOUNDED Israeli soldiers have been given a morale-boosting visit from spoon-bender Uri Geller.

The 57-year-old performer arrived at the Ram bam Hospital in Haifa from his UK home on a personal mission to cheer up the troops.

Geller, an Israeli who was himself wounded by shrapnel when serving in the army during the Six-Day War in 1967, said: "I spent four months recovering, so I know what these guys are going through.

Of course, he also treats them to his famous trick of gently rubbing the handle of a spoon until it begins to bend.

Geller then hands it to a bemused-looking injured soldier saying: "That's an official Uri Geller spoon. Sell it on eBay for a thousand dollars."

Since Israel's war with Hizbollah started a month ago, Rambam has been a hospital under siege.

Every day the guerrillas' rockets scream in towards Haifa, bringing death and destruction.

After every strike the ambulances go speeding off with sirens blaring â€" returning with the wounded and maimed

Alongside injured soldiers and civilians, the hospital's medics do their best to get on with the everyday cases.

Among the 6,000 being treated are women having babies, children having their tonsils out and patients with heart and respitory problems.

Rambam has treated 667 casualties of the war so far. Sixteen of those have died on the operating table.

Yesterday, as Geller's mercy mission ends, an elderly woman watches him drive away from the hospital.

She says: "That is Uri Geller. He is a very clever magician.

"Perhaps he could bend some Katyusha rockets so they could do a U-turn and go back into Lebanon."

The reformed junkie rocker Pete Doherty is so desperate for cash that he selling hid old heroin implant on eBay.

The implant is inserted into the addict’s stomach and blocks the effects of heroin and other opiates…he is asking for £100.

On eBay, Doherty sales pitch reads: “Hi. This is Pete Doherty. I am auctioning off my old O’Neill Naltrexone implant.

“Don’t worry. It’s clean and has no drugs or blood on. It is just the shell and components. It is a drug that blocks the effects of heroin and methadone and all other opiates, such as morphine, Palfium, codeine, dihyrocodeine and Subutex.

“I will give the money to pay back those who paid for my rehab. The rest will go to help some of my friends who are still users.”

It is thought that Doherty still has another implant in his stomach despite his claims that he is now clean. The implant, along with numerous stints in rehab are believed to have been paid for by off again and currently on again girlfriend, Kate Moss.

I doubt she is desperate for the £100 back…

Veronica Dennis changed her mind about auctioning the apparition because she was out of work for three months and trying to catch up on her bills.

"I'm working two jobs now trying to get caught up, but I can barely pay the current bills, but not the past bills. Our life has been a complete mess for seven months," she said.

Dennis' home caught fire last January.

The image that many believe to be the Virgin Mary was revealed when she removed a framed painting from the kitchen wall, which was blackened by smoke and fire.

Back then, Dennis told news organization that she intended to keep the apparition. "I don't want people to think I'm going to try to make a fortune off it. It's not my intention to put it on eBay," she told the Sun Journal newspaper.

The section of wall was sawed out of the house on Jan. 20 to protect against vandals. That vibrated some of the smoke dust off the image, she said.

Nonetheless, Dennis listed the starting bid at $2,500 in a posting that described the apparition making "national and international news."

But there were no takers before the deadline expired Sunday. Dennis said she might post it again with more emphasis on the unusual image's international fame.

Despite her money problems, Dennis is not homeless. She got an insurance settlement after the fire and used that to have her house rebuilt. She and her family moved into a temporary trailer behind the home.

Dennis said she expects to move back into her home possibly by the end of the week.

"No matter what I get, I do plan on donating some money from it to the Red Cross and the Mexico Fire Department Relief Fund. They were there when I needed them, and I want to give back," Dennis said.

WHAT HAPPENS TO STUFF LEFT AT AIRPORTS? Pennsylvania agreed to accept discarded and confiscated items from security contractors at a dozen airports, then sort the items and sell them on eBay.

LIKE WHAT? The program has handled pocket knives, chain saws, icing-encrusted wedding cake servers, a fishing contest plaque, handcuffs - some fur-lined - a sausage grinder, a man-sized artificial palm tree, auto parts, and even a single deer antler.

THIS STUFF SELLS? A bulk lot of 500 small Swiss Army knives went for $595. Hockey sticks, pucks and a goalie's mask were bundled for sale around time of Stanley Cup playoffs. A hunting-season kit including a buck knife, rope, flashlight and all-purpose Leatherman tool sold "like hot cakes."

The eBay Web site indicated 72 bids were received for the sports car. The Texas native said he's donating all proceeds from last month's sale to Oprah's Angel Network for Katrina and Rita recovery efforts.

Film credits for the 36-year-old McConaughey, who was born in Uvalde and grew up in Longview, include "The Wedding Planner" and "Sahara."

McConaughey in 2005 was named the "sexiest man alive" by People magazine.

The name of the winning bidder was not immediately released.

Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast Aug. 29. Rita made landfall in southeast Texas on Sept. 24.

Why didn't eBay partner with MySpace? Well, I'm not sure. It could have been a combination of reasons. One reason could be that eBay didn't feel there would be any synergies from such a move. Another reason could be that paying more than $900 million for MySpace partnership could have rocked the share price further, especially
after investors accused eBay for overpaying for Skype and in light of the current sentiment.

However, only a day before the announcement that Google and MySpace partnered, auctionbytes.com had an article about the growing number of eBay sellers that are creating MySpace spaces in which they market their products and stores. This strategy actually translates into increased traffic to their eBay store, better placement of their products on searches, and even better sales as the two examples cited demonstrate.

Also, MySpace, as you recall, was hailed the single most visited U.S. site last month, topping Google and Yahoo! Mail. Partnering with MySpace when eBay is trying to gain exposure for its own contextual ad program would have achieved just that.

So should eBay have taken advantage of this information and leveraged it with another acquisition/partnership regardless of sentiment? I guess there's no easy way to answer that and only time will tell.

Max Levchin, co-founder of PayPal, which was sold to eBay, has come back and introduced a photo service for eBay buyers and sellers.

Levchin's new start-up is Slide, which lets you create a slide show of your photographs. It runs on your desktop, your MySpace page (check out this Justin Timberlake MySpace page) or blog and as your screensaver. It incorporates not just your photographs but also can get feeds from other sites such as eBay, where you can follow a specific auction, or Yahoo, where you can get a continuous and updated stream of the latest news, or from iTunes, where you can get a stream of the latest, hottest songs.

eBay sellers, meanwhile, can take pictures of their products and feature them in a slide show on their eBay page.

(On a side note, during Apple's preview of Leopard yesterday, its next generation operating software, it introduced a feature called Web Clips, which lets you go to a Web site, grab a snippet of it, and turn it into a small window on your desktop so you can get a continuous stream from the site, such as a specific eBay auction).

The raids were part of a new partnership between Scotland Yard and eBay to halt the sale of stolen property on the Internet - and help reduce muggings. Detective Chief Inspector Mick McNally, of the National Mobile Phone Crime Unit, said: "Closing down this avenue for the sale of stolen mobile phones is a vital part of our campaign to halt handset theft. If thieves cannot sell the items, the drive to steal them will be significantly reduced."

The link-up between eBay and the NMPCU has led to a ban on listings for blocked or barred mobile phone handsets on the auction site.

Buyers have also been asked to alert eBay should they come across anyone offering these mobiles. Officers also want the public to register their mobile phones free on www.Immobilise.com to give detectives the best chance of recovering stolen phones and making arrests.

McNally added: "The very large majority of sellers on eBay are legitimate businesses or individuals. However, we are after the very small number of rogue traders.

"In a bid to find them, we have worked very closely with eBay’s fraud investigation teams and are extremely pleased with the results so far."

Gareth Griffiths of eBay said: "We have long sent out the message that eBay is the worst place to sell stolen items because of the open and transparent nature of the site’s operation: we can see what criminals are doing and we have their contact details.

"This kind of joint operation, however, takes that one step further and these arrests should be taken as a final warning to anyone else trying to conduct criminal activity on eBay.co.uk."

Griffiths said that eBay had begun an online campaign to alert users to the new policy about selling blocked or barred phones, giving guidance about the dangers of buying stolen handsets and advice on how to check a mobile is not stolen.

He said: "Educating our users on both what to look out for when buying a mobile phone and what is legitimate to sell on the site is paramount. Also, giving our customers the knowledge and engaging that knowledge to help with our investigation work means we have 15mn pairs of eyes and ears out there working with us on a day-to-day basis." – London Evening Standard

The owner is Jason McCluskey, 31, a chef from Portsmouth on the southern English coast. He had listed his beat up 1985 Volkswagen Polo for sale starting at 12 cents for "a bit of light-hearted humor".

His humorous take on the atrocious condition of the car led the vehicle to become a hit.

He will donate the proceeds of the sale to the Southampton General Hospital's children's intensive care unit. The hospital had taken care of one of his sons.

He gave details of the car being "tatty" with an exhaust "rustier than the Titanic". McCluskey added it was "not worth the 20 pounds that the scrap yard want to charge me for taking it away".

"It's fantastic for something that started off the way it did," he told AFP.

He added, "I had the idea to make people laugh. I never imagined it would take off. It is phenomenal."

Spurred by the car's horrid state and the seller's good act, other people also gave donations totaling $767 to the hospital.

The winner was identified only as the bidder with the eBay ID of "52817," said David Cotter, founder of Seattle-based Mpire, which co-hosted the 10-day auction with San Jose's eBay.

Andrew Morbitzer of San Francisco put the ball up for auction two months after he caught it at AT&T Park on May 28. Bonds smashed the ball into the center-field bleachers, where it bounced off a couple of fans and fell to the concession stands below, where Morbitzer was standing in line to buy peanuts.

Morbitzer, a marketing director with software company Intuit, has said proceeds from the auction will go into a down payment for a house in San Francisco. Morbitzer, 38, recently moved from Colorado to the Bay Area with wife Megan.

Cotter said experts had placed the ball's value somewhere between $200,000 and $300,000.

"We weren't really sure what it would get," Cotter said. "But eBay talked to some sports experts and (the winning bid) fell right around where they expected."

The ball was not expected to break any records. Mark McGwire's 70th home run ball, which set the single season-record in 1998, fetched $3 million. Bonds eclipsed that record in 2001 with 73 home runs, but the record ball sold for only $450,000.

Bonds moved past Babe Ruth on the home run list with No. 715. He trails only Hank Aaron's 755.

There were 69 total bids for No. 715, and the winning bid was placed at 11:56 a.m. today, four minutes before the deadline. The winning bidder didn't become active until the bids reached the $150,000 mark on Wednesday, Cotter said.

A good reputation at Ebay is "worth its weight in gold", according to German researchers who have conducted a detailed analysis of the relationship between positive feedback and successful sales on the auction site.

According to the boffins from the University of Bonn and the University of Aachen, a good reputation on Ebay translates into cold, hard cash. After analysing more than 300 auctions of popular DVDs over the past year, Oliver Gürtler from the University of Bonn and his Aachen colleague Christian Grund discovered that one percentage point more in positive customer votes pushes the auction price up on average by four per cent.

"And this happens although we are dealing with relatively small sums in the transactions we investigated," said Gürtler. "With more expensive products a good reputation should be even more rewarding."

Last November and December the two economics experts scrutinised a total of 313 DVD sales on Ebay, restricting their focus to six popular films including Madagascar, Star Wars and War of the Worlds.

The two researchers also noted that the popular belief among Ebay auctioneers saying that, wherever possible, auctions should end in the evenings when potential buyers have more time, appears to be false.

"Our study shows that the returns in the evenings are even lower than normal, " said Gürtler. One possible explanation he gives is that most vendors now place the deadlines for their auctions in the evenings in the hope of getting as many customers as possible. The customers therefore have a comparatively large range of products to choose from at this time of day. And this lowers the prices – despite the increase in demand in the evenings.

Scammers are using bots to create bogus eBay accounts that boast trustworthy profiles in a new scheme to rip off buyers, a security company said Monday.

The scam, said Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Fortinet, is a new twist on an old con where criminals set up bogus auctions, rake in the proceeds, and then scram, never intending to ship anything to buyers.

Long-time eBay users, however, have gotten wise to such double-crosses, and have learned to avoid auctions where the seller has little or no transaction record and/or little or no buyer feedback.

The new dodge, however, makes that defense useless.

According to Fortinet, the racket uses a bot to create a large number of fake accounts, then applies a spider to scavenge eBay for 1-cent "Buy Now" items, then purchase them.

(eBay typically contains several hundred one-cent items such as ebooks, Windows wallpaper images, or digital photos, all delivered electronically so there is no shipping cost.)

Ironically, most sellers of one-cent items also use bots to power their sales -- it would economically unfeasible to do so manually -- that automatically e-mails the purchase to the buyer, then posts a standard, and positive, feedback on the buyer's profile.

It's the sales history, and more important, the positive feedback, that the cyber crooks are after.

"Once they have 15 or 20 feedback items, they can use that account to set up bogus auctions," said Guillaume Lovet, the leader of Fortinet's virus research team in Europe and the discoverer of the scam. "They can set up an auction for an MP3 player, start the bidding at $35 or so, and run a short auction so that it's less likely buyers will look at the details of the account's feedback."

When the buyer of the purported MP3 player doesn't receive his hardware and complains to eBay, the only recourse eBay offers is to shut down the seller's account. By that time the scammer's moved on to another fake account.

By creating accounts with a bot and letting that bot scan eBay for penny deals, the criminal can set up a network of auctions and pull in some serious cash, said Lovet.

"With that one-cent rate, building 100 accounts with 15 positive feedbacks each costs [just] $15 [total]," said Lovet. "And 100 accounts are a reasonably solid base to set up a good deal of bogus auctions. [These criminals] are building positive feedback while sleeping, watching porn, or chatting on IRC, and only for a fistful of bucks."

The whole setup -- sellers of one-cent items automating their end of the deal, criminals automating purchasing those penny items to create a history and receive legitimate-looking feedback -- is a good example of a cyber symbiotic relationship.

"It's win-win for both sides," said Lovet. "There are one-cent auctions that exist on one side, and crooks wanting to build positive feedback on the other.

"Two bots are talking to each other at some point," said Lovet, who noted that it would be funny if it wasn't being used to scam innocent eBay users.

Lovet said he had not uncovered any evidence that the two sides of the arrangement were being operated by the same people. "Both sides are only using each other," he said.

He recommended that buyers check any eBay seller's profile carefully, and if there are numerous one-cent purchases in the account's feedback, steer clear. "That's a strong sense that something's wrong," said Lovet.

Lovet has posted his eBay scam research on the Fortinet Web site.