Free Republic

TOKYO — A black jumbo watermelon auctioned in northern Japan fetched a record $6,100 Friday, making it the most expensive watermelon ever sold in the country — and possibly the world. The 17-pound premium Densuke watermelon, one of only 65 from the first harvest of the season, was purchased by a marine products dealer who said he wanted to support local agriculture, according to Kyodo News agency. The fruit is grown only on the northern island of Hokkaido. In a country where melons are a luxury item commonly given as gifts, the watermelon's hefty price tag follows another jaw-dropping auction...

...The Attorney General's office subpoenaed 18 institutions on Monday and Tuesday of this week, including some of Wall Street's biggest, such as UBS, Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs, according to a person familiar with the investigation. Mr. Cuomo's office has plans to send out additional subpoenas soon, says the person. Mr. Cuomo's office considers the investigation an "industry case," meaning officials are looking into all aspects of the auction-rate business – from what municipalities or other issuers were told about auction rates as methods of cheap financing all the way down to their distribution, sales and marketing to consumers who...

Wayne Davis will be saying goodbye to 75 old friends on April 19.Over the past 20 years, the Southlake resident has bought and restored almost 80 classic and muscle cars -- from a 1953 Oldsmobile Fiesta convertible to a 1989 Ferrari Mondial t Cabriolet -- and now he has decided to sell most of his personal collection at auction.Davis, 57, said it is time to retire. He plans to travel the country's two-lane highways in a few of the cars he decided to keep."I want to get out and enjoy them a little bit, do the Route 66 deal from...

In a large, featureless convention centre 40 miles east of Los Angeles, more than 1,000 people have gathered early on a Sunday morning.From the stage, they are addressed in earnest by a man in tuxedo and bow tie, and they can watch the proceedings on giant video screens on either side of him. He is preaching property, and although this auctioneer's high-speed patter sounds more like a cattle auction, here they are bidding for homes. More than 100 houses are up for sale here and every two to three minutes a property goes under the hammer. Similar auctions of...

Bond debt rates surge The auction-rate bond market has collapsed, with Colorado hit hard. By Aldo Svaldi and Jeffrey Leib The Denver Post Article Last Updated: 03/08/2008 03:54:45 PM MST February was a bad month for Stephanie Doughty, the chief financial officer for Poudre Valley Health System, as interest rates on most of its $215 million in auction-rate bonds climbed steeply, adding as much as $140,000 to weekly interest costs. On Monday, things are expected to get worse when $50 million of that debt goes to auction to face higher rates. "It was just unbelievable, to see such a dramatic...

The Federal Reserve on Friday announced measures to ease liquidity pressures in stressed financial markets. The Fed said it would increase amounts in its Term Auction Facility auctions March 10 and March 24 to $50 billion each, a rise of $20 billion from the amounts announced for each of these auctions. The Fed also said it would initiate a series of term repurchase transactions that are expected to cumulate to $100 billion.

The Federal Reserve has announced that it will auction another $60 billion (€40 billion) in March as it continues to combat the effects of a severe credit crisis. It repeated a pledge to keep holding the auctions "for as long as necessary." The U.S. central bank said Friday that it will make $30 billion (€20 billion) available to cash-strapped banks at each of two auctions, on March 10 and 24. The Fed began the new auctions in December in hopes that the increased supply of cash would prompt banks to keep lending and prevent a severe credit squeeze from making...

I just got this in an e-mail .... I have dibs on the White House and the Defense Dept. before everything is all gone.

The Federal Reserve, seeking to combat the effects of a serious credit crisis, said Tuesday it had auctioned $30 billion in funds to commercial banks at an interest rate of 3.010 percent. It marked the fifth in a series of auctions that so far have pumped $130 billion in money into the nation's banking system in affort to provide cash-strapped banks with extra reserves. The Fed's hope is that the increased resources will keep banks lending and prevent a severe credit squeeze from making the current economic slowdown worse. The latest auction results showed that the Fed's effort is having...

EBay abandons negative comments about buyers   Suzy Jagger and Jonathan Richards   All buyers and sellers are equal in the virtual auction world of eBay, but buyers are about to become more equal than everyone else. From May, eBay, the world's biggest online auction house, will block sellers from posting any negative or neutral comments about buyers who purchase their goods to coax more of them on to the site. The move means that anyone selling an item will have little recourse to complain that the purchaser of their Britney Spears T-shirt or antique Whitby egg-timer had been...

Excerpt - WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The first round of the much-anticipated Federal Communications Commission auction of communications airwaves drew $2.4 billion in prospective bids before closing at midday Thursday, according to the agency. Nearly half the money, some $1.04 billion, was bid by one participant seeking a national license for a swath of 22 megahertz of radio spectrum. The bidding for a second national license of 10 megahertz topped out at $472 million in the first round. Both these bids are believed to be the minimum bid allowed in the first round for these chunks of spectrum. The information was...

The Federal Reserve, working to combat the effects of a severe credit crunch, announced Friday it had auctioned another $20 billion in funds to commercial banks at an interest rate of 4.67 percent. Fed officials pledged to continue with the auctions "for as long as necessary." The central bank said it had received bids for $57.7 billion worth of loans, nearly three times the amount being offered, indicating continued strong interest in the Fed's new approach to providing money to cash-strapped banks. It was the second of four scheduled auctions. The first auction, on Monday, of $20 billion resulted in...

The 1297 copy of the Magna Carta is the only one in private ownership A rare copy of the Magna Carta has been sold for £10.6m ($21.3m) in an auction at Sotheby's in New York.The copy dating from 1297, one of only 17 still in existence, was bought by US businessman David Rubenstein. The auction item had been owned by American billionaire Ross Perot's Perot Foundation since 1984 and was on view at the National Archives in Washington. The original Magna Carta was sealed by King John of England in 1215 and enshrined civil rights in English law. 'Temporary...

ROME (Reuters) - A 1.5-kg white truffle found in the Italian countryside will be sold at a charity auction in Macau where it is expected to fetch 150,000 euros (108,000 pounds). Truffle hunter Cristiano Savini displayed his precious find at a five-star hotel in Rome on Tuesday before it was flown to the Chinese enclave for Saturday's auction. Savini's dog, Rocco, sniffed out the truffle, one of the biggest unearthed in the past 50 years, by an oak tree near Pisa last weekend, in an area of Tuscany where Cristiano and his father scout for truffles every year. Ten years...

A Springfield rifle owned by the famed Apache warrior Geronimo fetched $100,000 during an auction of Wild West guns and weapons that brought in more than $1 million. Lawman Wyatt Earp's double-barreled shotgun garnered $65,500, while a saber attributed to U.S. Army cavalry commander George Custer sold for $20,315 at the Bonhams & Butterfields auction Tuesday. Some of the guns were offered by a private collector who spent a lifetime accumulating firearms once carried by some of the most famous and infamous figures in American history, said Paul Carella, director of the company's arms department.

A frantic two-hour auction Saturday in downtown Fresno was a sign of the times as bidders snapped up 48 new houses -- most for thousands of dollars below the builder's original list price.

MAIDEN, N.C. -- A South Carolina man who mistakenly lost his amputated leg when it was sold in a barbecue smoker at a public auction will get the appendage back, authorities said Wednesday. John Wood, of Simpsonville, S.C., had been battling to regain custody of the leg from Shannon Whisnant, who found the leg in the smoker he purchased at an auction of Wood's belongings last week, WXII-TV in Greenville, N.C., reported Whisnant had said he wanted to keep the leg if Wood wasn't willing to pay to get it back. The leg was being kept at a funeral home,...

Lock of Che Guevara's hair to be sold Mon Sep 3, 12:51 PM ET MIAMI - A former CIA operative and Cuban exile plans to auction what he says is a lock of Che Guevara's hair, snipped before the Argentinian revolutionary and friend of Fidel Castro was buried in 1967. Gustavo Villoldo, 71, was involved in Guevara's capture in the jungles of Bolivia, according to unclassified U.S. records and other documents. He plans to auction the hair and other items kept in a scrapbook since the joint CIA-Bolivian army mission 40 years ago. "It's time for me to put the...

(AP) MIAMI -- A lock of Argentinian revolutionary Che Guevara's hair is about to hit the auction block. Former CIA operative 71-year old Gustavo Villoldo was involved in Guevara's capture in the jungles of Bolivia. He plans to auction the strands of hair and other items kept in a scrapbook since the joint CIA-Bolivian army mission 40 years ago. "It's time for me to put the past behind and pass these on to someone else," said Villoldo, also a veteran of the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Heritage Auction Galleries of Dallas will hold the auction October 25-26....

FURTHER UPDATE TO FLASH WITH ADDED INFO ON LB CITY HALL FINANCIAL OUTCOME: At 11:54 a.m. today in an auction in a packed U.S. Bankruptcy courtroom in downtown Los Angeles, Save the Queen, LLC was awarded the contractual rights previously held by QSDI, including development rights to nearly 50 acres of prime property surrounding the Queen Mary for $43 million...the amount of its initial overbid without the need to bid further. The outcome came after initial bidder O & S Holdings tried and failed to have the Court disqualify Save the Queen (on grounds it failed to strictly comply with...

Terre Haute - It wasn't that long ago when the Sisters of Providence and Saint Mary of the Woods College in Terre Haute were making worldwide news. Now they are doing it again. A four-day auction of their collaborative heritage is capturing attention from all over the world. The tranquil setting of the Sisters of Providence and Saint Mary of the Woods College near Terre Haute can best be described as heaven on earth. It is not the kind of place for fast talking. Usually it's a place of reflection. This weekend it's both. After 20 months the Sisters and...

A diamond-adorned sword once owned by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant brought a winning bid of more than $1.6 million in an auction of Civil War items. The sword given to Grant, who later became the 18th president, was one of the marquee items among the 750 to be auctioned Sunday and Monday by Heritage Auction Galleries of Dallas. Another showcase item up for bid was Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer's frayed battle flag, which was auctioned for $896,250. Another item of note was a "Bonnie Blue" flag carried by the 3rd Texas State Cavalry, which drew a bid of $47,800....

FONTAINEBLEAU, France - After more than 200 years in the family, the gold-encrusted sword Napoleon carried into battle in Italy will be auctioned off Sunday, across the street from one of his imperial castles. The intricately decorated blade is 32 inches long and curves gently — an inspiration Napoleon drew from his Egyptian campaign, auctioneer Jean-Pierre Osenat said. "He noticed that the Arab swords, which were curved, were very effective in cutting off French heads" and ordered an imitation made upon his return, Osenat explained. The last of Napoleon's swords in private hands, it has an estimated value of at...

Collusion and Tricks -by Kate Reynolds One in a Series of Articles from Agorics, Inc. Which auction type is the best? As discussed earlier, there is no single answer to that question, but one way of approaching that subject is to think about collusion; the extent to which incentives to collude vary under different auction types can help determine which type of auction to choose. All auction types are susceptible to collusion, but degrees of incentives vary. Rings Rings are simple to understand. A subset of bidders gather together and agree not to outbid each other which has the overall...

Jerry Garcia's guitars spur Grateful Dead auction May 8, 2007 SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Forty years after the Summer of Love celebrated the free-living ways of the 1960s counterculture, bidders paid more than $1.1 million at auction on Tuesday for Grateful Dead memorabilia. A cream-colored 1975 Travis Bean electric guitar belonging to the band's legendary, late lead guitar player, Jerry Garcia, brought in $312,000 in a brisk sale, auction house said. Enthusiasts also bid $102,000 for an acoustic guitar and $39,000 for a Gibson electric guitar played by Garcia. One of his leather guitar straps sold for $20,400, or four...

EX-WIFE'S DOONEY & BOURKE PURSE & DIAMONDS MYSTERY BAG! SHE LEFT PURSES, JEWELRY & MORE! HER LOSS IS YOUR GAIN!

Motorists who fail to show proof of liability insurance during a traffic stop could see their vehicles headed for the auction block under a bill passed Monday by the Oklahoma Senate. Sen. Patrick Anderson, R-Enid, won adoption of an amendment to allow for the seizing of vehicles when drivers cannot show that they have insurance. His plan amends a section of law that now allows police to confiscate vehicles containing drugs. Anderson's amendment was attached to a bill prohibiting inserting microchips into Oklahomans against their will. That measure was approved, 35-13, and sent to the House for consideration. Some senators...

Today: February 17, 2007 at 10:20:5 PST Sale of JFK Sniper Window Falls Through ASSOCIATED PRESS DALLAS (AP) - The auction of a window advertised as Lee Harvey Oswald's sniper perch in the killing of President John F. Kennedy brought a bid of about $3 million, but the sale quickly fell through. The window was up for auction Friday on eBay with a starting price of $100,000, and bidding quickly rose to seven figures. But 32 bids were either retracted by the bidders- normally because a wrong price had been entered, including one for $17 million - or canceled by...

AP) LOS ANGELES Tribune Co. directors prepared to deliberate over the struggling media company's next step Wednesday as a much-anticipated bidding period for its assets came to an anticlimactic close. Tribune - owner of the Los Angeles Times - remained silent about the results of the bidding for the company or its two primary units, newspapers and broadcast after a late-afternoon deadline for submitting proposals had passed. No announcement was made and none was expected, but the widespread view of those watching the review process closely was that no premium bid had been made. "We're not going to say anything...

An unusually well-preserved 65 million-year-old dinosaur nest containing fossil eggs sold in an auctioned for nearly $420,000 Sunday. Auction house Bonhams & Butterfields had estimated the raptoid nest, which contained exposed embryos of the predators, would go for between $180,000 and $220,000, auction officials said. Details of the buyer would be kept under wraps, Jannelle Grigsby, a Bonhams spokeswoman said. The Cretaceous-era nest was unearthed in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong in 1984 and eventually was sold to an American collector in 2003. The collector restored the nest to museum quality, revealing embryonic remains of 19 eggs. Some eggs...

Gangs face tougher rules in public bids The Yomiuri Shimbun The Finance Ministry has formulated new regulations that would bar individuals and firms linked to crime syndicates from participating in public auctions of state-owned land in hopes of preventing such property from being obtained by gangs, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned. The regulations also are aimed at preventing such deals from providing crime organizations with means to earn money. The ministry also has included a provision that would penalize successful bidders who sell plots of state land won in public auctions to parties linked to crime syndicates. The government reportedly intends...

A Whitehaven home once owned by Elvis Presley's father, Vernon, goes on the eBay auction block today. The four-bedroom brick home at 3650 Hermitage was home to Vernon Presley from 1961 to 1965. Sale coordinator Stephen Shutts, president of the Honky Tonk Hall of Fame in Nashville, also coordinated the auction in May of Elvis' former home on Audubon for $905,100. When high bidder Uri Geller and two partners were unable to close that sale, the house was then bought by Nashville record producer Mike Curb for $1 million. Shutt's spokesman Lance Cowan said the minimum bid for the house...

AUSTRALIA'S last privately owned Victoria Cross medal awarded at Gallipoli has sold at auction tonight in Sydney for a world record $1 million. Lot 1078 was purchased by a prominent Australian who wishes to remain anonymous and who bid over the phone. The medal, awarded posthumously to New Zealand-born Australian soldier Captain Alfred Shout, was sold by his grandson, 67-year-old Graham Thomas. Auctioneer Tim Goodman, of Bonhams and Goodman auction house, told the crowd it was hoped the medal would soon end up on public display. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new world auction record for a medal," Mr...

A date with Jessica Biel will be up for bid next week to help raise money for a teenager who lost her leg in a prom night limousine accident, Denver newspapers reported this week. The event dubbed "Mollypalooza" to help Molly Bloom's family with medical expenses is scheduled for Tuesday at the Rock Island Club, organizers told The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News. The News described the date as a lunch date. In an audio message posted on the Internet, Esquire's "The Sexiest Woman Alive" urges listeners to support the event and says: "I intend to submit a very...

A dazzling gold-flecked 1907 portrait by Gustav Klimt has been purchased for the Neue Galerie in Manhattan by the cosmetics magnate Ronald S. Lauder for $135 million, the highest sum ever paid for a painting. The portrait, of Adele Bloch-Bauer, the wife of a Jewish sugar industrialist and the hostess of a prominent Vienna salon, is considered one of the artist's masterpieces. For years, it was the focus of a restitution battle between the Austrian government and a niece of Mrs. Bloch-Bauer who argued that it was seized along with four other Klimt paintings by the Nazis during World War...

Anonymous bidder snaps up flag belonging to a Connecticut regiment and three others for total of $17 million. An American Revolutionary War flag fetched $12.3 million at an auction in New York on Wednesday, and a group of three other flags went for more than $5 million to the same bidder, Sotheby's said. The total price of $17,392,000 was well over the pre-sale estimate of $4 million to $10 million for the two lots of battle flags captured by the British during the 1775-83 war,...

The British captured this battle flag made of gold silk from a Virginia regiment. According to Sotheby’s, it’s the earliest surviving documented American flag bearing 13 stars. It has a painted emblem of a beaver and the motto “Perseverando.” The image was copied from the engraving on the $6 Continental bill that Benjamin Franklin had chosen. ROY A. BAHLS/THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT Amid the crack of musket fire, smoke and confusion on the field, three battle flags fluttered above the exhausted 3rd Virginia Detachment in South Carolina on May 29, 1780. Col. Abraham Buford and his Continental soldiers had set out...

A Stradivarius violin almost 300 years old has smashed the record for the amount paid for a musical instrument at auction, selling for $3.5m (£1.8m). The instrument, made in 1707, broke the previous record of $2.03m (£1.07m) paid for a Stradivarius in 2003. The buyer has not been revealed but Christie's in New York said he was a "benefactor and patron of the arts" who loves classical music. It had been privately owned but was loaned to world-renowned orchestras. The auction was tense, with gasps punctuating the bidding. A round of applause broke out when the price reached $3m (£1.5m)....

CHICAGO (AFP) - A rocking chair that US President John F. Kennedy kept in his White House apartment could sell for more than 100,000 dollars, a Texas auction house said. "There are certain personal characteristics that we associate with our presidents. When it's Abraham Lincoln it's the stovetop hat. For Dwight Eisenhower it's golf clubs. For John F. Kennedy it was really the rocking chair," said John Petty, a spokesman for Heritage Auctions. Kennedy often used rocking chairs to alleviate back pain. There are a number of iconic photos of him sat in a rocking chair, including one where he...

Nineteen rare watercolors by William Blake were auctioned Tuesday in New York. "The works, illustrations for "The Grave," a 1743 poem by the Scottish writer Robert Blair, were discovered five years ago by two British booksellers. At the time, experts heralded them as the most important Blake discovery in a century and said the illustrations should stay together. It appeared that the public agreed; some in the audience spoke of the breakup of the collection as a criminal procedure."

NEW YORK - The art world's interest in meteorites has skyrocketed, with collectors and curators buying up the outer-space rocks for display in museums, galleries, or on a cocktail table at home. Next week, meteorite hunters will get a chance to bid for some of the world's most coveted extraterrestrial rocks when they go on sale at Bonhams' New York natural history auction. Among the highlights are a small slice of the 15.5-ton Williamette, the crown jewel of meteorites on display at the American Museum of Natural History, and a 355-pound (160-kilogram) iron meteorite from Campo Del Cielo, "Valley of...

£1m mosque beams pulled from auction in ownership row By Stephanie Condron (Filed: 04/04/2006) Christie's has cancelled the sale of five wooden beams from the 1,200-year-old mosque in Cordoba in Spain which were expected to fetch more than £1 million at auction today. Lawyers for one of the most important Islamic buildings in the West successfully blocked the sale of the 10th century beams amid arguments over who owns them. The sale, which was to be the highlight of the Islamic art manuscripts auction today, was to have seen each carved beam reach bids of up to £300,000. "I am...

Starved for cash, the New Orleans school district is taking a long shot and hoping to sell its flooded, unsalvageable school buses on eBay. Some submerged to their roofs in the black flood waters, the yellow school buses were widely photographed in the days after Hurricane Katrina and have become an icon of the city's devastated school system. School officials acknowledge the sale of the buses on the Internet auction site may puzzle some people used to more traditional school fundraisers like bake sales. "There's no shame in it. Not one bit," said school board president Phyllis Landrieu. "This is...

A man who purchased 41 tapes from the B.C. government found himself the unexpected owner of 77,000 personal medical files. The tapes included records such as HIV status, substance abuse history and mental illness. The man bought the tapes at a public government auction with the intention of selling them. The man, who assumed the tapes were blank when he purchased them, handed them over to the Vancouver Sun when he realized the information they contained. Minister of Labour Mike de Jong said an investigation is underway into how the sensitive records ended up on the auction block. "It is...

"I'm like a cemetery — I'll take anything!" That was the exhortation from U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, Sugar Land Republican and certified auctioneer, as he squeezed $16,600 from the crowd during a live auction at a Harris County Republican Party dinner last week. DeLay knew the name of just about every bidder and used rapid-fire, joke-laced persistence to prompt high offers from the crowd. The hubbub even spurred Houston bootmaker Rocky Carroll to chip in five more pairs of handmade boots than he originally had pledged to the auction. There is no question that DeLay is an able auctioneer, but...

The prayer asked for blessings for the soldiers serving in Iraq, the president and the Republican Party cause. There was even a request for a divine blessing for Tom DeLay. His opponents say that with just a few days left before Tuesday’s primary election, the embattled congressman needs all the help he can get — heavenly or otherwise. But across the room of the Galveston County Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Day Dinner, few seemed worried that once the ballots were counted Tuesday night DeLay would be anything other than the party’s pick to return to Washington. “Mr. DeLay will absolutely...

NEW YORK (AP) -- A photograph of a pond taken by Edward Steichen sold for more than $2.9 million, easily setting a world record for the highest-priced photograph ever auctioned, Sotheby's said. "The Pond-Moonlight," taken on Long Island in 1904, sold on Tuesday for $2,928,000, including the buyer's premium, Sotheby's spokesman Matthew Weigman said. The buyer's identity was not immediately disclosed. The photograph shows a pond in a wooded area with light coming through the trees and reflected in the water. Pre-sale estimates priced the photo, which is slightly bigger than 16 inches by 19 inches, at up to $1...

This is an update to my thread the other night about Cindy Sheehan. A group called Yearly Kos was auctioning off Cindy Sheehan to do a speaking engagement. Last time I checked, the bids were up to $1,275.00. There is also a thread about this auction on the eBay sellers central discussion forum called "AHHHHHH! Uh, well, at least shipping is free. Is this for real?" It can be found at http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000218333 This thread is still running in that forum, even after several days. Several of the posters there noted that the Cindy Sheehan auction violated ebay's policys, and apparently...

"Futureshop: How the New Auction Culture Will Revolutionize the Way We Buy, Sell, and Get the Things We Really Want," by Daniel Nissanoff (Penguin Press, 256 pages, $24.95) If you think putting out $700 for a stroller is foolish extravagance, think again, says Web entrepreneur Daniel Nissanoff in his new book "Futureshop." Nissanoff says buying such an expensive stroller makes perfect sense. He points out that celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna pay as much as $2,800 for Silver Cross Balmoral strollers, an exclusive brand that has become a status symbol on Manhattan's Upper East Side. But Nissanoff is...

I don't know if it has been done before, but what could top a thread that gives the chance to talk about some of the most beautiful cars ever made. On Speed Channel until midnite.