Most outrageous Bob Shop and Bidorbuy listings

Bob Shop, formerly Bidorbuy, has seen some interesting listings over the years, ranging from an edible chocolate painting to a voter trying to sell their vote.

Andy Higgins launched Bidorbuy in August 1999 during the dotcom boom.

The platform uses an Internet auction and online marketplace model, meaning that items sold are either auctioned or sold at a fixed price.

With the platform soon becoming the largest online marketplace in the country and the entire African continent, many decided to use it to sell some of their most treasured items.

Just one year after the platform launched, NetCare auctioned plastic surgery procedures in a listing titled “Today’s crazy auction is a Reduction Mammoplasty.”

BBC News reported that Netcare was advertising a different type of plastic surgery daily, with bids starting at less than R3.50 at the time.

Several years later, in 2008, a seller listed a South African coin featuring Nobel Prize laureates Nelson Mandela and VW De Klerk starting at R750,000.

This was around Mandela’s 90th birthday, possibly boosting the price.

The following year, during the 2009 general elections, an undecided voter attempted to sell their vote to the highest bidder.

However, the highest bid only reached R53, which wasn’t worth the wait, so the listing was removed.

In 2011, Bidorbuy gave its users the opportunity to bid on a game of chess with grandmaster Garry Kasparov. The auction ran over six days, with six games up for grabs.

Kasparov was set to play a simultaneous match against roughly 30 participants, with six slots reserved for Bidorbuy winners.

Two years later, following a Justin Bieber concert in Cape Town, one mega fan spent R32,600 on a vest the pop star wore during his performance.

The frame displaying the vest included drumsticks used by Justin Bieber during the concert, the working crew backstage pass, a photo of him, and a police-stamped affidavit detailing how the vest was acquired.

Bidorbuy also featured a listing for the world’s largest edible chocolate painting, which weighed 500 kilograms and was three meters wide and 1.9 meters tall.

Chef Nicolas van der Walt created the painting, which took 200 kilograms of chocolate, 150 kilograms of glucose, and three litres of food colouring. The bidding started at R30,000.

“This is just one of the unusual auctions that we see from time to time. Our platform is so flexible that it can accommodate a practically unlimited variety of products,” then-Bidorbuy CEO Jaco Jonker said.

“Although unusual items are by definition an exception, they go to show that our platform provides an easy sales channel for unusual items that the seller might otherwise find too expensive, or difficult, to sell by other means.”

A year later, a dress made out of loom bands appeared on the site, attracting a bid of R40,000.

The creator said it took an investment of R10,000 to buy the 29,744 loom bands and 12 hours of work per day for 17 days to create the dress.