10 of the Most Expensive eBay Auctions Ever

If the ultimate price of Barry Bonds’ 715th home run ball, the one that netted him second place on the all-timer homers list, had been known? The bleachers would have run thick with blood that day. Andrew Morbitzer was purchasing some classic ballpark peanuts when the ball fell almost literally into his lap, a lucky bounce that earned him $220,100 on eBay two months later.

A meteorite that landed in Nigeria in 1962 was particularly rare, being that it was from Mars, and not some pedestrian body like the moon. It was hawked on eBay decades later in 2006, and earned a very respectable $450,000.

The Hollywood sign that’s overlooking Los Angeles isn’t, in fact, the same one from the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood. It was replaced in 1978, and the original letters floated around until being sold on eBay as a collective in 2005. The final price paid in order to decorate a hillside of your choosing in an incredibly confusing manner? $450,400.

Here’s a cold one no one in their right mind would crack open, no matter how hot of a day it is — a bottle of Allsopp’s Arctic Ale, a beer brewed specifically for an 1852 Arctic expedition. An unopened bottle of the strange brew sold in 2007 for $503,000 on eBay, which was great news for the seller, and absolutely horrible news for the previous eBay seller he had just flipped it from, who had misspelled Allsopp’s as “Allsop’s,” an error which netted him a mere $305.

Known as “Black Betsy,” this was the signature bat of baseball icon and Field of Dreams guest star Shoeless Joe Jackson. He might not be Honus Wagner (more on that in a bit), but souvenirs from Shoeless Joe are still worth an astounding amount of money. Want a ballpark figure? How about just over $500,000 — or $577,610 to be exact, the price an eBay buyer paid in 2001 for the Black Betsy.

Most people will never have the scratch to buy a Ferrari of any description, much less one of the rarest Ferraris ever made (just 399 Enzo Ferraris ever existed). If you were on eBay in 2004 and had $1 million in liquid cash, though, the opportunity was there.

Ahh, Honus Wagner — the thinking man’s Babe Ruth. One of baseball’s earliest icons was pictured on a baseball card printed in 1909 and sold inside packs of cigarettes. Apparently, without his permission, as Wagner himself had the card’s production stopped for use of his image without permission. This makes the card especially rare and valuable, as the person who paid $1.1 million for it in 2000 agreed.

Albert Einstein probably sits at the perfect intersection of academic achievement and public knowledge to produce the most valuable possible smart-guy paraphernalia. That’s backed up by the price one of his handwritten letters, known as the “God Letter” because it contained thoughts on faith, fetched online. It sold on eBay in 2012 for $3 million.

First appearances of iconic heroes in comic books make for a pretty penny. When you’re talking about probably the single most famous comic book hero in the world, Superman, we’re far beyond pennies. An unsullied copy of Action Comics #1, the first ever appearance of Superman, sold in 2014 on eBay for $3.2 million.

At first, you’d think the shipping costs would be outrageous on this thing. Then you remember — it’s already a plane. I would have assumed all private jet sales involved expensive suits, sunglasses and strong handshakes, but in 2001, someone bought a Gulfstream II on eBay for a cool $4.9 million.