Batmobile for a Ventriloquist

     Due to the Holiday Season the auction business slows down quite a bit, both live auctions and eBay auctions. The Harris Brothers did have a special Thursday night auction on December 20th that Andrea and I attended. I can guarantee you that you WILL read all about it in an upcoming post, however, that will be when I feel eBay is back to normal and it will be a more traditional article where you can track the featured item's progress. This post is a story from the past and one of my favorites actually. The time I sold a Batmobile to a ventriloquist.

     It was the Monday about two weeks before the premiere of the final chapter in the Christopher Nolan Batman series, The Dark Knight Rises. Honestly, I have no idea if events, such as the release of a movie, have a direct effect on items that share a common theme, but I could argue with this instance that it does. I walk into the auction house and in booth one both Andrea and I see something that is pretty sweet looking. Are you thinking that it is something like a Batmobile? Good, because it was this:

     This is a 1989 Tiger Electronics Batmobile "Handheld" LCD Game. Remember the Tiger handheld video games? The ones with the three inch simple lcd screen. Well, this is one of those on steroids. Here is a better shot where you can see the screen and controls.

     It still has the very simple three inch screen, the difference is the elaborate controls. This game is actually quite rare and even more so in working condition. Kids playing the game, jerking the steering wheel and the gearshift knob makes a lot of these not working properly. This one worked just fine.

     Andrea expressed interest in this game and told me I should buy it. I had already thought that myself but she said not to bid too much because it was untested. That was a good point and I believe that that fact alone scared off many of the bidders. I let Don(the auctioneer) go all they way to $5 before I opened the bid. I gave him a simple nod and was ready for the excitement to begin. The problem(or complete lack of a problem) was, there was no excitement to be had. Where the bid started and stopped was one in the same, $5. It was hard to hold back a smile.

     The eBay auction was pretty fun to watch. After the first day, the Batmobile already had over one-hundred views, which is very rare. By the third day, the game had about thirty watchers and the top bid was up to around $30. When the auction closed, the top bid was $184.50! I let out a cheer. This was my second biggest score(when you figure the ratio of money spent to money earned) to date. As if this wasn't pretty awesome, the story gets more interesting.

     Like the best buyers on eBay, this guy payed instantly. So I package up the Batmobile and look up the address in my Buyer Details page. I write out the entire address before I realize what I wrote down. This package was addressed to Jeff Dunham. I am sure there are a few thousand Jeff Dunhams in the United States but this package was headed to an upper scale neighborhood in California. Okay, so there are probably more than one well to do men named Jeff Dunham. So, then I checked his user name. I am not going to disclose his entire user name but it starts with "jjalapeno." Jeff Dunham has a puppet in his act with the name Jose Jalapeno. Now I know that all of this is quite circumstantial because someone with the name Jeff Dunham might have thought it funny or cool to name his eBay account after a puppet in the famous Jeff Dunham's comedy act. Then I looked at when the account was created. This user account was made in 1997, more than five years before his first Comedy Central solo appearance, and WAY before he was a household name. With all this information put together, I am sure THE Jeff Dunham bought my Batmobile.

     Thanks for reading and please look for my next posts, especially when I start the $10 Auction Experiment in 2013. Keep Your Eyes Open!