Introduction
On June 4th, 2003, Chris Loenthal emailed a link to the Ghost in a Jar
auction on ebay. That auction was getting a million zillion hits, so I thought
it would be funny to post an auction mocking it. My first thought was
"toast in a jar". I hastily threw together this auction with Melanie's
help.
I kept the title of the auction "Ghost in a jar" so that I would
get traffic from people looking for the infamous Ghost in a jar auction, but I
wrote a little "additional info" appendix to the auction explaining
that I accidentally wrote "Ghost" instead of "Toast" because
of the Ouija pad on my iBook.
The ghost in a jar auction continued to cause a panic, and auction overflow
pulled the toast into the confusion. Dave Barry linked to the toast on his blog
and Fark.com linked to it on their message boards.
Soon Toast in a jar had 30,000 hits, 33 bids and a high
bid of $15,099. I also received 21 nice "Question for Seller"
emails in two days. On June 5, Cockeyed.com actually got more traffic from the
toast auction (1,300 visitors) than it did from the Webby Awards Online
Celebration (300 visitors).
Ebay pulled the toast auction on the third day, so I didn't get a screenshot
of the chaos.
Ebay gave two reasons for pulling the auction, First, it is against the rules
to post an auction with an unrelated hyperlink (or more than one hyperlink) in
it, and it is against the rules to post an auction with an inaccurate title. No
big deal. I wasn't really going to get the $15,099 anyway.
The Auction
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This auction is for a piece of toast in a jar. |
The toast started off as a slice of Sara Lee Homestyle Wheat bread.
After a few moments in the fiery southern pit of this Proctor Silex
kitchen toaster, the bread had changed irreversibly into toast.
The toast contains about 100 calories. |
Here is the actual slice of toast emerging from the toaster.
This photo required a bunch of clean-up in photoshop. It probably would
have been easier to actually clean the toaster. |
Although the toast isn't haunted or anything, it is still pretty weird.
Toast? In a jar? Bizarre! |
The slice of toast may be a little moldy by the time it arrives at your
house. I don't know how jarred toast keeps, but I'm sure whoever buys it
will enjoy having toast in a jar. I don't recommend opening toast in a jar
or eating toast in a jar.
If you want to read more about toast, check out Dropping
Toast on cockeyed.com.
The shipping is $3 within the United States of America, $4 to Canada
and $4 to the United Kingdom. I accept paypal, money orders and checks. This
auction is just as funny with no bids, so please don't bid unless you
actually want the toast in a jar, and you are willing to pay for the jar and the shipping.
Send email: rob at cockeyed.com with any questions.
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