For a few weeks now on his show, Jay Leno has been having celebrities autograph a new Harley-Davidson motorcycle to be auctioned off on eBay, with all proceeds going to aid Tsunami victims. I dunno if I think this is a nice gesture or a publicity stunt but bidding just closed, and $800,100 is going to help some folks who could really use it. That's not a bad thing. I thought the last minutes of bidding were rather interesting…
That's quite a jump — more than half a million clams — in just a few minutes. One assumes these guys were using "sniping" software to enter rapid bids but still, it had to be quite a frantic contest. Imagine bidding $800,000 at the absolute last second but losing to a guy who simultaneously bid $800,100. I've been known to get nervous when I was bidding five more bucks to try and win an old Freberg record.
I have no idea who "steinerdwm" is but I did a search and noticed that his or her past eBay purchases have mostly been for paintings, the most expensive of which went for $305. So this is probably a bit of an extravagance. It must have been the Dr. Phil signature that made it all seem worth it.