

eBay listing for iPhone with "Flappy Bird" installed. At $90,000 and counting... - JoshGlazebrook
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-iPhone-5S-16GB-Space-Gray-AT-T-With-FLAPPY-BIRD-GAME-INSTALLED-/181321090752?pt=Cell_Phones&hash=item2a379446c0

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abbott
In auctions like these the highest bidder will never follow through with
payment. Unless this is some exceptional case. They are also fueled by shill
bids. The bidder's account will be flagged for non-payment, and due to the
priced nature of the breach of contract the account would then be closed
permanently.

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alister
Can you please also explain the _motivation_ for anyone to do all the phony
bidding. They don't intend to buy it, they risk getting their account closed,
there's no side-channel profit (like ads) from the shill bidding, no one's
going to be impressed by the fakery, so why?

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bradleyland
Think of it as trolling. What is any troll's motivation?

Also, it is not safe to assume that the bids you see were placed by the actual
account holders. There is a very active business in stealing and using other
people's eBay accounts for use in fraud schemes. If you're someone sitting on
a list of 1500 stolen eBay accounts, you might be happy to burn an account
with a low feedback. Notice that most of the bids were placed by users with
less than 100 feedback; these accounts aren't terribly valuable. The top
bidder with 722 feedback is a bit of an anomaly, but that could be part of the
troll: "I'm so l33t I burn accounts with 722 feedback!" Still, in the scope of
things, 722 isn't that high for eBay feedback.

Then again, many of them could just be random people who don't care about
their low-feedback eBay account. I know some people who have multiple eBay
accounts for various reasons. It's not unusual for someone to forget that they
have an eBay account, so they create another, then remember/discover the other
one later. So what if you burn a spare account?

The bottom line is that when you're talking about an event with this level of
attention -- hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of eyes -- the tiny
statistical sliver of irrational behavior will begin to show up.

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MishraAnurag
Looks like a scam.. The app icon for Flappy Bird is nowhere to be found on
that screen.

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soneil
It's a stock photo. Two clues - the only non-apple app visible is ebay's - and
the caption "stock photo" beneath the image ..

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richforrester
Oh come on, most of those bids have got to fall through, right?

.edit: then again... I guess it only takes two ...

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esalazar
Is this real? I am hoping that this whole thing is an elaborate marketing
campaign Dong Nguyen (Flappy Bird Dev).

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borplk
PR stunt?

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inetsee
Joke?

