eBay craziness, or generosity from the bottom of their heart?

[jefnvk]

Last weekend's NASCAR race was quite exciting.  Waltrip spins Robbie Gordon under caution, destroying Robbies car.  To show his displeasure, he throws his helmet at Waltrip's car next time it came around under caution.

Being the nice guy he seems to be trying to be, he decided to auction the helmet off on eBay and donate the winnigs to the hurricane relief fund.  I figure this thing is going to go for the $10-15,000 that most of the other NASCAR auctions to raise money have been going for.

Imagine my suprise when I open the auction, and the price tag is at $2 million.  And my amazement when an hour later, it is at $8 million.  This thing still has a week left on it.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5245335747&fromMakeTrack=true

So, what is it?  Generosity, or craziness?  Is the 'winner' going to show when payments come due?

[DustinD]

I think the million dollar bids are fake and they will have to start the auction over.

[Antibubba]

That, or those bidders should've been wearing helmets themselves, earlier in life, at some critical juncture.

[Jamisjockey]

Its a common prank for highly publisized auctions, or obvious scams.  Someone will build a fake account, 'sell' some fake stuff to thier friends to get feedback, and then start bidding stupid on something.  The 8million will fall through and they'll have to retry.

[Jamisjockey]

HHmmmm....on further review, the current bidder is at 9mil700grand....and seems to be a legitimate ebayer.  They've got over 1100 feedback, mostly for sports memorbilia.  Seems someone has more money then sense, or made one hell of a typo!

[jefnvk]

OK, it is the right auction, it is linked to from the guy's team's webpage.  And it is now restricted to pre-approved bidders, and still going up, so it would seem that it isn't prank bids.

The only things I can think of is that they are being backed by a company that was going to donate the money anyways (unlikely), or they feel the need to dontate $10 million of their own money to the relief fund, which has probably gotta be one of the biggest personal donations.

[Schuey2002]

This auction has been taken down by Ebay.

[jefnvk]

Yep, I seen that.

Hopefully if they were fraud bids, some action is taken.

[client32]

It has been relisted:   http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5246187188
and it is at $50,100.00

Here is the explaination from the website (www.robbygordon.com):

eBay Auction Update
   
Posted on Sep 21, 2005, 15:15
The Robby Gordon eBay auction for the helmet Gordon wore during Sunday's NASCAR Nextel Cup Series race at New Hampshire International Speedway will be reinstated at 10 p.m. EDT tonight. Officials at Robby Gordon Motorsports, along with representatives of eBay, conferred on Wednesday afternoon and chose to allow Auction Cause, a premier online auction management agency specializing in high profile eBay corporate and charity events, to manage the process. Most notably, Auction Cause has the ability to properly qualify bidders on the eBay site. The original bidding exceeded $10 million on Wednesday, and given the traffic on the site, it was difficult to determine the validity of all the bidders.

[Iain]

Well I never.

'NASCAR' and 'exciting' in the same sentence.

(I'm kidding)

[jefnvk]

It'll be interesting to see if it does get anywhere near where it was.  I very much doubt it will break $150,000.

Personally, I think they should have let it go, and hit the 'winner' with a lawsuit if they backed out.