In case you didn't see the ubiquitous press reports, Britney Spears shaved her head the other day. So of course some of the hair had to show up on eBay. I read this morning in The Washington Post that her hair was on sale for "1 million on eBay" by the salon owner, Esther Tognozzi of Esther's Haircutting Studio in Tarzana, California.
However, when I went on eBay to check out the auction and sorted the Britney hair auctions by highest price (yes, it seems everybody and their brother claims to have gotten their hands on her hair, and some of it even seems to have flown to Australia in record time), I did not see the $1,000,000 auction that was supposedly legitimate.
I did see a lot of fake-looking auctions, including one currently at $99,999,999 with 72 inexplicable bids ("NEWS ALERT BRITNEY SPEARS SHAVES HEAD GET a hair chunk"). The piece of hair shown in the pic is also blonde, and as Britney watchers know, she had her hair dyed dark brown when it was shaved.
Other auctions claim to be authentic, including one at $100,100 with 3 bids, one at $30,100 with 39 bids (both blonde and brownish looking); and one currently at $4,150 in the search results list but with a price of $250,100 once you click into the auction (how that works, I have NO idea).
That last auction appears to be more authentic than any of the others, if for no other reason than the location is indeed Tarzana, Ca., where the hair-chopping allegedly took place.
One enterprising young man is running an auction titled "Just Like Britney Spears..My Hair, starting at $49.99..only, oops, when I click into it, it says "this listing has been removed or is unavailable."
I imagien the eBay staff is having a field day with these auctions.
In other news, the Post did an interesting piece on Google Checkout on Sunday (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/16/AR2007021602170.html). While PayPal has 133 million account holders, and Checkout
handles only one transaction for every 70 that PayPal does, Google seems to be aggressively gaining ground.
I'd like to see both services more widely accepted (I was happy to see PayPal used by Babies R Us whenI went to buy a friend a shower gift the other day), and I see advantages to each..one of PayPal's is that you can easily buy stuff on the Internet using proceeds from your eBay auctions. Google's Checkout is reportedly one-click, which is something that I think a lot of people in this fast-paced world will appreciate.
eBay's excuse for not allowing Checkout on eBay is that Checkout doesn't have a proven track record, but as Checkout gains acceptance, I think that is going to be harder for them to claim. Stay tuned.
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