Town Sold On eBay Not Really Sold

from the whoops dept

Earlier this month, I wrote about how it's become popular to use eBay as not just a buying and selling platform, but also as a PR platform for such things as selling towns - because you're almost guaranteed to get press coverage for selling something weird. Of course, it looks like there might also be a downside. Last year, a town in California received a ton of press for being put up on eBay, after conventional attempts to sell it had failed. That press coverage helped push up interest in the town until someone "won" the town with a bid of $1.8 million. Of course, as we pointed out at the time, with many such high profile auctions, the top bid is likely to be bogus. A few months after the original auction, it was reported that the sale still hadn't been finalized. Now, exactly a year after the original eBay auction happened, the folks who "own" the town are admitting that the buyer disappeared and never sent a check. Even worse, the sellers then went down the list of everyone else who bid on the town and failed to find a single legitimate buyer. Thus, the town is back up for sale - but not on eBay and at half the price of what they "sold" it for last year.

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