Now I've spent a lot of my life selling stuff on eBay. There've been serious man-hours spent snapping old leather jackets and battered-in Marshall amps from every scrupulous angle: making sure my item was in the correct category, that I'd detailed every little scuff and wine stain, scouring Royal Mail's postage costs for the perfect price and toying with keywords for the title. It's a royal pain in the eButt. For those, like me, rummaging round your wardrobes at the end of the month for that bit extra pocket money, I have fantastic tip for you - don't bother. Get yourself a jar, paint it up, upload a photo, and the world of eBay is your online oyster. You can say it contains Lady Gaga's bodily gases, the breath of Cerberus or, like this complete lunatic (some may say genius) a simple 'Ghost In A Jar'. Chances are you'll get more bids than that chest of drawers you were thinking of putting on. In fact, the winning bid on this badly painted glass tub was $50,922. The seller, Teajay101, requested serious bids only for the 'Black Thing' that was terrorising him, and wrote that they "would not be held responsible if the black thing escaped the jar". What's actually in there remains a mystery, as the buyer did not pay up, but Ghost In A Jar sparked an eBay phenomenon of memorabilia: buttons, t-shirts, bumper stickers, even parody items such as PMS in a Jar. This was, however, ten years ago, since then the crazy world of EBay has reached new peaks of wackiness...
