This dilapidated 1972 Dodge Sportsman Royal Van is better known as the “MELVAN” by fans. It’s adorned with spray paint, etchings, rust and a KISS “mural” hand drawn by Kurt Cobain with a sharpie. Legend has it the Nirvana frontman shoplifted the markers from the Thriftway grocery store in Montesano, Washington.

It is featured in many books, ‘Cobain Unseen’, ‘Come As You Are,’ as well as several Nirvana documentary films.

One wonders if this puppy deserves a spot in the ‘The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.’

For those in the dark, the Melvins were instrumental in bringing grunge into the mainstream. The band mingled with and influenced Nirvana who later made it big with ‘Nevermind.’

It turns out the band’s minimum price for the van was $101,000:

The MELVINS have put out the Question, who Will Make it to 101,000 first, The MELVINS facebook fan page https://www.facebook.com/melvinsarmy to 101,000 fans, or the MELVAN to $ 101,000 ? Well, I say Bid High, and Add The MELVINS , They ROCK !

Funny highlights from the Q and A section:

Q: Does this van possess magical powers? For instance, will it make my crappy band not suck, land us a major record contract and allow us to be the first band to play on the surface of the sun?

A: With the exception of playing on the sun, it seems to have worked for The MELVINS Thanks Mitch

Q: Does it smell like Buzzo’s armpits? … My “buy it now” finger is lubed.

A: Having no experience smelling the Kings armpits, all I can say is it smells vintage, does that help ? Thanks For Your Interest Mitch

Bids stopped short at $99,999.99 so it didn’t sell. Luckily, The Melvin’s won themselves some new recruits by posting their little piece of history on eBay.

It’s been nearly three years since I last posted. Now that’s a commitment to slack. So here I am typing at 2 a.m., sipping on limoncello.

In March 2010, TypoHound was named Kim Komando’s cool site of the day and quite possibly discussed on her show. For those unfamiliar, she is best known for her American talk radio program based on the intricacies of computers, the Web, and electronics.

Her weekend program reached a weekly cume of 2.25 million back in 2006. Komando.com is no slouch either. It’s ranking is 1,817 in the U.S. according to Alexa.

Kim’s coverage created a major spike in traffic on TypoHound, if only for a few days. For that I am extremely grateful. More than anything it’s wonderful to know it’s a tool people find useful and perhaps even clever.

This is what Kim had to say about TypoHound:

eBay is one of the most popular destinations for bargain hunters. You can find pretty much anything. Of course, the deals would be better without all the competition.

Alas, other people are vying for the same products you are. That drives up prices. Fortunately, great deals are just a spelling error away.

Sellers misspell product names all the time. They might leave out a letter, or include an extra one. These misspelled products often don’t show up under a normal search.

That’s the point behind TypoHound. Simply enter the correct name of the product. TypoHound generates a list of common spelling errors for that product name.

Click the provided link to search eBay with the misspelled words. You can find some excellent hidden deals. From there, you can use the site as you normally would. You just might be spending less.

www.typohound.com

At times it’s difficult to explain what TypoHound does without confusing the bejesus out of people. Kim reaches an older audience with a basic command of the Internet, so she is used to emphasizing clarity. She did a commendable job.

Find Hidden Deals on eBay now!

I’m a huge fan of quality beer. Macro brews such as Coors Light or Corona are snubbed in favor of Hacker-Pschorr, Leffe Blonde and Unibroue Maudite. There are much more hardcore fans than I on BeerAdvocate, however I was completely unaware just how deep the well is.

A museum quality sealed and intact bottle of Samuel Allsopp’s Arctic Ale from around 1850 (England) currently fetches 500k no problem on eBay. Could this be the holy grail of beer?

Shopping on eBay is supposed to be about bargain hunting. Some are just much better at it than others. A few summers ago, a collector (and budding investor) from Tulsa, Oklahoma ended up making the ultimate beer purchase.

He won the auction for a bottle of Allsopp’s Arctic Ale in which the seller made a typo in his auction and spelt it “Allsops.” The auction ended with very little interest and only 2 bids for the bottle that was obviously worth so much more than the winning bid of $304.

To add insult to injury, the winning bidder turned around and listed the bottle again on eBay, but this time with the name spelled correctly, and got a whopping 157 bidders and a sale price of $503,300.

That sure shows the power of typos.

Bought by collectordan for $304 (”Allsops” misspelling).

Sold by collectordan for $503,300 (Corrected spelling).

How did he find the original auction?

He might have been among the small percentage of eBayers that browse for items as most use the search function. It’s hard to say how he came across the original auction since competing bidders that knew how much it is worth missed it. Most likely this is a case of good timing and good luck.

Ready to search for typo auctions for yourself?

By far, the most efficient way to find typos on eBay is with an online app like TypoHound.

Collectible items have the most promise for using this method to bag bargains. Sports trading cards, rare coins, antiques and vintage guitars are just a few examples.

Find Hidden Deals on eBay now!

Chloé St-Amour of Montéal, Canada fits this description pretty well. The difference is she will give you a tarot reading online that you can buy on eBay.

I am Chloé Saint-Amour and I have been practicing clairvoyance with the Tarot for more than 35 years. Ever since I was a child I have been impregnated by the mystery and the science of the Tarot.

I PROPOSE YOU TODAY A PSYCHIC READING OF QUALITY AND TRUTH, WHICH ALLOWS YOU TO TAKE THE GOOD DECISIONS IN YOUR LIFE AS YOUR FUTURE.

So how do you get your reading? Apparently by e-mail. Prepare to be astonished.

Banner ads just don’t seem effective as they used to be. Does anyone pay attention to billboards, even in rush hour traffic?

This dude has the answer! He has the new advertising medium you have been dying to sink your marketing dollars into… his buttocks.

Here is a sample of his hilarious blurb, however, be sure to read the whole thing on eBay. It is better to see the real auction for yourself.

I will get a real permanent tattoo of your advertisement, website, tattoo design, logo, company name, or whatever you may think of immediately after the auction closes.

Now a little about me… I’m 18 going on 19 years old. Next week I will be moving to Mount Pleasant, Michigan, which is home to thousands of college students. There are two colleges in downtown Mount Pleasant, Central Michigan University and Mid-Michigan Community College. Another college, Ferris State University, is less than 30 minutes away. I have a passion for music, and love hanging out with people.

Okay, great, he loves tattoos. The part that baffles me is how he thinks his butt is such a great advertising opportunity. Unless he hangs out with his college buddies in the buff, only a few lucky ladies will get to see your ad buy.

Happy bidding!

Most often, people blame eBay’s decay on factors like the weakening economy, the rise of Amazon, as well as eBay’s own inefficient search functionality. But the real and simple reason is eBay is no longer fun. Over the years, it has lost online ground and eyeballs to pure entertainment destinations such as YouTube and social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook.

To help push this argument home, various traffic research graphs illustrate how eBay’s traffic has slowed down (see the most recent example below, comparing 2007 and 2008). While the internet as a whole grew, eBay shrunk.

In the first quarter of 2004, almost 50 percent of the entire U.S. Internet population visited eBay every month. By 2008, eBay’s visitors accounted for only 1.5 percent of total minutes spent online.

Still, I fail to see how less traffic necessarily means online auctions are not as fun as they used to be to the average person.

In a similar (and more convincing) article, Scot Wingo blames online classified sites such as kijiji or craigslist for eBay’s dwindling popularity.

Newspapers were losing classified revenue to eBay hand over fist in 2000/2001, as eBay gave people a much easier way to sell their items. The Pew Internet Project released a report, showing that classified sites (mainly craigslist), have doubled in usage between 2005-2009.

Was it just social networking and free online classified ads that led to the decline or is there more to this?

Has eBay become just another dull shopping site?

Perhaps eBay was more fun in 2000 because it was relatively new. For many at the time, buying online was a fascinating new possibility and the fact it was an online auction made it more exciting.

One user commented that sniping tools have taken the fun away. “You are battling a competitor you’ve fought a number of times before–and someone comes in 5 seconds before the end of the auction with a computerized snipe taking it away from both of you.”

Sure it sucks being sniped when you lose. But how about when you win? For web savvy surfers sniping tools are great since they allow you to set the maximum bid and forget about it. One reason eBay isn’t getting as much traffic, is because snipers don’t have to keep visiting the auction, refreshing their browser and staring at a clock.

Less time on eBay might simply mean surfers have become more efficient with the use of numerous online tools. In my eyes, the tools make eBay a more exciting place to visit all over again.

Find Hidden Deals on eBay now!

One that sticks out in my mind as a classic is the man that sold his ex-wife’s wedding dress on eBay. Doesn’t sound that bad? Well, this man posted tasteless photos with him wearing the dress. The description spoke of how she took the ring but left the dress and he didn’t need a “$1200 shower curtain.”

Today we will look at a really outlandish auction I spotted on a great site for finding such things.

Here we have a nicely detailed Mexican swine flu pig with a runny nose, removable Mexican sombrero, blanket and removable mask. I wish my snot looked this toxic and uber-green.

The seller tries to close the deal with: “Now you can have your very own Mexican swine flu pig!” See, they know this is what I always wanted, a dirty animal with an infectious disease in my home. It’s almost criminal that there isn’t one bid on this pink little guy.

“PAYPAL ONLY”

What set The 9 apart was, although it had a candy-coated exterior with a pretty, bubbly girl hosting it, underneath it all it was a show for web geeks. The nameless, faceless Yahoo staff members scoured the internet, looking for sites with new, innovative ideas. They also let you in on what they thought was funny online. Often this would be a goofy flavor-of-the-month Youtube video. To keep things light the host threw in the occasional football reference in an attempted to keep general audiences appeased.

Another interesting inclusion was the Pepsi Tenth - a feature where viewers could submit websites that the producers of The 9 missed. The next day, one (sometimes more) of the nine websites was a “Pepsi Tenth” site.

I hadn’t heard about The 9 until July 27, 2006. A massive surge of traffic was coming from a Yahoo page. When I checked it out I was of course thrilled. There Maria was, touting the site I had worked so hard to promote. Although, I had done a lot to get the word out that month, I was still surprised that the producers of The 9 even found my modest site, TypoHound.

It turned out that they likely found about it on i-am-bored.com. The staff at Yahoo frequented this site looking for ideas. When I submitted TypoHound to i-am-bored.com, I didn’t expect much. It ended up receiving tons of hits and comments, many positive, many negative and the site became a hot topic.

The 9 was canned on March 31st, 2008. You can still visit the site but the only thing they have left up is the phrase: “The 9 has left the building.”

A Yahoo representative provided this comment: “‘The 9′ was a groundbreaking and successful Internet show, and we learned a great deal from it. Over the past two years that we have produced ‘The 9,’ our content strategy and business has evolved. We are turning our focus to more contextually relevant programs that complement our site offerings. For example, ‘Primetime in No Time,’ leverages the ‘recap’ format of ‘The 9,’ highlights TV programming from the night before, and lives on the Yahoo TV site.”

Sure, that is fine. What baffles me is why they put all that work into the show and then removed all the content and videos when it was cancelled. Would it hurt Yahoo to provide an archive?

Bring back this page, Yahoo. I’d like to see Maria talk about searching for David Hasselhoff items with TypoHound one more time.
http://9.yahoo.com/2006/07/27