Buy, Sell, or Trade…Strange Things

If you're anything like me (and I know I am), you enjoy taking a look at some of the more strange and bizarre items available for purchase online. It's not that I need the bone chips from a major league baseball player's post-op elbow, or the wad of gum once chewed by a famous human who then flung it at the paparazzi. I just like knowing those items and plenty of other strange things have been and will continue to be offered up by folks looking to make a couple of bucks.

From our friends at Oddee.com comes a list of some of the more, uh, unusual items people were willing to part with. For example:

Would you sell a body part for a new car?

Mark Parisi would. He appeared on CBS' show The Doctors to discuss his plans to sell his left testicle for $35,000. But he's not selling his testicle for any old reason; he wants a new car. Specifically, he wants a Nissan 370Z, described on Nissan's website as “a serious car for serious drivers.” Agreed, because you have to be pretty serious to want to sell a body part in order to buy a new car. Luckily for Mr. Parisi, the sticker price for the Z cars hovers between $30,000 and $45,000.

Okay...no. The car to inspire me to make that kind of deal has yet to be invented. Maybe a scooter perhaps?

A hard-up Italian law student is selling naked pictures of herself online to raise cash for a new scooter.
Mary says that her beloved moped "is close to its end" and that she desperately needs money to buy a new set of wheels.

With jobs in her native city of Naples hard to come by, she's set up a Facebook page to drum up some funds. No pictures of her in the buff actually appear on the social networking site.

Instead, she is seen holding a board in front of her face on which she's written details of her unique deal. She's also distributed fliers around the city. Staff at the University of Naples Federico II found out about her racket after being contacted by concerned parents.

But Mary, who has not revealed her surname, insisted that she was doing nothing wrong, and that she's already had "lots" of sales.

Again...No. Finally, there's this guy:

Eric Smith found himself devastated after his long-time girlfriend confessed to cheating and broke up with him. At the time, Smith was prepared to propose to his now ex-girlfriend and had even obtained her perfect image of an engagement ring. After the breakup, the engagement ring remained in his closet for months. Due to the unpopular design, he was unable to sell the ring in-person to anyone, but did find a buyer on eBay and shipped off the unused jewelry.

With a substantial amount of money sitting in his Paypal account, Smith decided to get rid of the cash to destroy any lingering memory of the ex-girlfriend. While Smith still had graduate school loans to take care of, he decided to spend the entire amount on a complete set of wearable Master Chief armor from the popular Halo series. The various parts of the suit arrived in seven shipments over eight months.

Since the purchase of the armor, Smith likes to walk around as Master Chief at various conventions. It takes two people to help Smith put on the armor, and he has to walk around slowly to avoid breaking any section of the armor. According to Smith, he doesn't regret the decision to spend all proceeds from the sale of the engagement ring on the set of Halo-inspired armor.

Not that a guy walking around in Halo-inspired armor is gonna have a lot of need for an engagement ring (at least according to several women surveyed in our office).