Found on eBay (Universe/Rizzoli)
Have you ever gone to a yard sale and marvelled at the dubious treasures on display? Imagine seeing a homemade deer-poop paperweight for ten dollars, a lonely left boot, a belt with a glass eye embedded in its buckle. It would never be possible to find such fantastic oddities all in one thrift shop or garage. But, all these objects do exist and have been sold on eBay. Now these items and many, many more like them are collected for your viewing pleasure in this hilarious "museum" of priceless eBay artifacts
With nearly two hundred million registered users, eBay continues to thrive as one of the most popular shopping websites on the net. The suspense of bidding online inspires fanatic obsession, and all kinds of people from grandmothers to teenagers come to eBay to buy and sell just about everything. If you're searching for a rare deal on a hard-to-find gift, eBay is the place. But, when it comes to the unusual, buyers can easily get more than they bargained for. The author has collected one hundred of these gimcracks and photographed them as if they were jewels. Here are a trucker's prayer plaque in its shining newness, a real frog coin purse that looks like it's about to hop off the page, and a strand of Abraham Lincoln's hair shot as a historical gem. Accompanying each image are the seller's original sales pitch and goofy email correspondence about the objects' possible but improbable uses. This pocket-size catalog of curiosities makes for a delightful novelty gift for the eBayer in anyone's family.
CNN with Jeanne Moos
This clip is from way back in 2002, from American Morning with Paula Zahn.
“After gawking at Marc Hartzman’s new book, it’s hard to get excited about the latest rash of ‘amazing’ discoveries being trumpeted in the news. So what if researchers just uncovered a 7-million-year-old human skull, a 500-year-old drawing by Michelangelo and the shipwreck of JFK’s fabled PT-109 boat? Such treasures pale in comparison to the artifacts unearthed by Hartzman in ‘Found on EBay’ (Universe Publishing), an encyclopedia of weird knickknacks sold on the Internet auction site.”
.— Roy Rivenburg, LA Times, July 25, 2002
