With the coronavirus shutdown pushing us toward The Greatest Depression and leaving many of us wondering how we will manage our finances, the days when people paid huge amounts of money for celebrity memorabilia seem like something from the forgotten past.

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However, we can still cast our minds back to those distant times when people went on to eBay to place bids for a half eaten sandwich that Miley Cyrus might have gotten her teeth into, or one of Harry Styles’ old sweaty shirts.

So to remind us all that a world existed before the virus, here are the 10 maddest celebrity items people have paid for.

10 John Lennon’s toilet

John Lennon was a pathological liar, wife beater, and genuine music legend, both for The Beatles era and his solo career, with the celebrity sing-a-long to his song Imagine already giving us one of the cringiest moments of the coronavirus era. When Lennon sang “Imagine no possessions” from his luxury mansion it might have been because he had seen into the future and learned that one day someone would pay $11,773 for one of his old toilets. This very expensive toilet had been at the Tittenhurst Park home that Lennon and Yoko Ono lived in from 1969 until 1972 and was one that Lennon had given to his builder to use “as a plant pot” when he got a new one installed.

The auction where this bizarre 2010 sale took place was held at the Paul McCartney Auditorium in Liverpool and the person who paid almost ten times the expected price for a used . . . ahem . . . ’john’ kept his identity a secret. We cannot really blame him for that.^[1]

9 Kiss coffins

The only thing that Kiss lead singer Gene Simmons loves more than rock ‘n’ roll is money and that lust for lucre has helped to make his band the Krusty the Clown of rock music – willing to put their name to the tackiest merchandise in the world if it keeps the cash rolling in.

They took things to a whole new low – literally – back in 2001 though, when they launched the Kiss Kasket. This was a make of coffin that was covered in pictures of the group members as well as the band logo and cost $3,300. As if selling band branded coffins was not scraping the barrel enough they also offered urns that Kiss fanatics could have their ashes stored in.

At the launch, Simmons said that although he loved life, the Kiss Kasket “makes the alternative look pretty damn good” and the ads suggested people who had bought one and then failed to die could use it as a drinks cooler while they waited. Among those who have gone to the next world in a Kiss Kasket are Pantera guitarist ‘Dimebag’ Darrell.^[2]

8 Elvis Presley’s hair

The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll Elvis Presley had an iconic haircut. The ducktail and quiff that he rocked much defined the 1950s, but even that does not explain why anyone would want to pay money to own some of his old, dead hair. Back in November 2002, a man who used to cut the hair of The King – Homer Gilleland – put a collection of clippings he had kept for decades on sale at an auction in Illinois.

You might think that keeping someone else’s hair for that long is a bit weird and you would be right. It would be creepy if it was the hair of an ex girlfriend or boyfriend and you wanted it so you could stroke it and cry every night, but holding on to it to sell is not really any better. Then again, BUYING another person’s hair is weird too, so the anonymous buyer does not look great here either. The clippings came complete with letters from Gilleland, expert in Presley memorabilia John W Heath and someone called John Reznikoff who is apparently a respected authority when it comes to collecting hair (!) The final sale price of $115,120 made it the most expensive hair ever sold at auction.^[3]

7 Russell Crowe’s jockstrap

Back when he starred in Gladiator in 1999, Australian Russell Crowe was a sex symbol and lots of women might have been willing to bid for his used jockstrap, but by 2018 you would expect there to have been fewer takers. That was when the piece of sweaty protection was put up for sale as part of a ‘divorce auction’ of his belongings that the actor organized. The jockstrap for sale was one Crowe wore during the filming of Cinderella Man in 2004, although we have to hope that it had been washed during the 14-year gap.

Crowe was expecting to get offers of between $500 and $600 for it – which might seem a bit egotistical, but it actually went for $7,000 so if anything he was selling himself short. The buyer was an English television personality, who later claimed that he bought it for donation to a Blockbuster video store that was struggling for money (ya think?!) so that they could use it as memorabilia to attract customers. Whether they want the sort of customers who would be attracted by it is another matter.^[4]

6 Justin Timberlake’s French toast

Justin Timberlake has lots of fans, both from his days with NSYNC and his solo music and movie career and one of them was passionate enough about the man nicknamed ‘trouser snake’ to pay over $1000 for a couple of slices of French toast that he had come into contact with.

The toast was made for the star during an early morning interview he gave to the radio station Z-100 back in 2000, but the chef managed to burn it and Timberlake decided not to bother. After the interview, the DJ took the leftover toast and put it straight onto eBay, showing the true US spirit of enterprise.

A bidding war then took place over the stale toast, and given that Timberlake was still deep in his boy-band period at the time it is not surprising that the person who most badly wanted his uneaten breakfast was a 19-year-old fan of NSYNC called Kathy Summers. Speaking to the media after claiming her ‘prize’, Summer said: “I’ll probably freeze dry it, then seal it . . . then put it on my dresser.” NSYNC were also toast not long after this heartwarming story, splitting in 2002 as Timberlake went solo.^[5]

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5 Jennifer Lawrence’s sports bra

Jennifer Lawrence rose to fame by playing Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games movie trilogy, but it seems many of her fans are not so much hungry as thirsty – particularly the ones who bid for one of her used sports bras at an auction in 2013. The sports bra was one of several pieces that went on sale at an auction house in Los Angeles, with all of the clothes being ones she had worn during the filming of the movie Silver Linings Playbook.

The auction took place not long after she had won the first of her Oscars so that might explain the frenzied bidding or it could just be that a lot of dudes around the world had money to burn and were a bit too keen to own one of her bras. The total sum that was raised by the sale of the clothes was $12,000 and the sports bra accounted for a cool $3,175 of it. The owner of the auction house said afterwards that global bidding had been “furious” and the people who lost out on the bra were probably furious too. Surely finding a girlfriend would be a cheaper option for these guys.^[6]

4 William Shatner’s kidney stone

We know that Star Trek fans are pretty obsessive about everything connected with the show, so when Captain Kirk sold his kidney stone on eBay the most amazing thing about it was not the money it made but the fact that the buyer was no sci-fi geek. Shatner chose to put the stone onto the site in 2006 to help raise cash for the homelessness charity Habitat for Humanity, after falling ill with it the previous fall while he was filming Boston Legal.

When he put the huge stone up for sale he also included other pieces of surgical equipment like the string and stint that helped him pass it – just for those who did not find the stone itself gross enough. Plenty of people were willing to bid for a – literal – piece of Shatner though, with the whole lot eventually selling for $25,000. Lots of dedicated trekkers must have been mad as hell that night though, as none of them ended up with the precious stone. The buyer who boldly went where no man has gone before was an online casino called Golden Palace, who added it to other collectables that can be viewed on their website, such as a toasted cheese sandwich with the Virgin Mary’s image on it.^[7]

3 Scarlett Johansson’s used tissue

Just in case you thought it could not get any more disgusting than buying a kidney stone, someone actually paid thousands of dollars for a tissue that Marvel star Scarlett Johansson once sneezed into. This moment of snotty behavior came long before Scarlett was cast as Black Widow in the MCU, as it followed an appearance on the Tonight show when she was promoting terrible 2008 superhero movie The Spirit. During the show she complained about having a cold and Jay Leno gave her a tissue that she blew into a couple of times.

This left it covered in both lipstick and nasal fluid, which would make most people want to get it in the nearest bin. Instead the star signed it and put it up for sale on eBay to try and raise money for a charity called Harvest. It worked too, possibly because there were lots of fans who were hoping to use it to clone her, Sheldon Cooper style. The eventual winner had to cough up $5,300 to get his hands on it (yes we are assuming it was a man). He may be having the last laugh though, as he sits at home with his Hollywood star clone wife.^[8]

2 Truman Capote’s ashes

The writer of Breakfast at Tiffany’s was someone who enjoyed being famous and the center of attention so he might not have minded people bidding huge amounts of money to own his ashes. They went up for sale at auction two years ago and the buyer paid $43,750 for his or her ghoulish prize. Capote actually died all the way back in 1984 and his ashes had been kept by one of his best friends – the wife of Johnny Carson, the Tonight Show legend. She claimed that having them near to her was a comfort, but after she died in 2017, the decision was made to put them up for sale.

The president of Julien’s Auctions Darren Julien said afterwards that “with some celebrities this wouldn’t be tasteful” (no kidding), but added that he was completely certain that it was what Capote would have wanted. The starting price for the ashes was $2,000 and it does seem likely that the flamboyant author would have been delighted to have brought in more than twenty times that much money.^[9]

1 Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s breath

“Every breath you take”, The Police sang, but the next line was not “I will bottle and sell on eBay.” That is what happened to political activists and part-time actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie during 2005, in the first . . . um . . . breath of their romance. At the premiere of the movie Mr and Mrs Smith on June 7th that year, Joe Wilson and his partner in crime Pam DuMond, who call themselves the Celebrity Air Collection Squad lay in wait for passing stars. As Jolie and Pitt walked by on the red carpet they scooped up some of the air into a jar and sealed it shut.

At this point you might be thinking: “what if they were both holding their breath at that moment?” or “what if one of them farted before the jar was sealed?” It is possible that a Hollywood star fart in a jar would be worth more than basic breath though, so Wilson and DuMond may have missed a trick by not labeling it as that. As it was, they made sure to call it ‘Celebrity Air’ and point out that it might not be that of Pitt or Jolie at all so that they were within eBay rules about not selling something when its existence cannot be proved.^[10]

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Who of us didn’t grow up being told ‘Don’t chew your nails’ or ‘Stop picking your nose’? Though children may not realize it, the fact is, the human body is fairly nasty and it’s normally a good idea to try to mask our grotesque bodily habits for the good of our social image. Most of us usually grow up and out of our grosser habits by the time we’re adults or at least only indulge in secret. Usually.

But there’s a weird fascination over the disgusting and for some few there’s also fame and fortune to be found behind the stigma. These are ten examples of ways an income has been found from gross habits.

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10 Pooping for Profit and Purpose

There’s a particularly nasty bacteria called C. Difficile that infects nearly half a million people in the United States alone. The symptoms include watery diarrhea and cramping, which can even reach fatal severity. To counteract this dangerous infection, a course of antibiotics is usually prescribed, but antibiotics do not discriminate between harmful and helpful bacteria. During the course of treatment some 2,000 different kinds of stomach bacteria, most very helpful, are also killed. Worse yet, C. Difficile can be difficult to permanently destroy and the tenacious invader will sometimes repopulate even after a course of antibiotics,^[1] but there is a solution.

Fecal matter transplants. These transplants are the result of taking the rich gut biome from a healthy human stool sample and distilling it into a pill to be taken by someone suffering from C. Difficile. This replenishes the population of helpful bacteria as well as assisting in the elimination of C. Difficile from the body, but not just any poop can be used for a fecal matter transplant. Out of a thousand prospective donors only 4 perfect of them qualify after rigorous medical testing. Extremely healthy poop is a rare commodity, one worth paying for. Donors can make $250 for five samples a week or $13,000 a year as compensation.^[2]

But it isn’t just about the money.

“We get most of our donors to come in three or four times a week, which is pretty awesome,” said Mark Smith, co-founder of a fecal matter transplant company, “You’re usually helping three or four patients out with each sample, and we keep track of that and let you know.”

9 Fast Food and Weight Gain For Science

In 2012 researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis made an unusual offer: gain weight and get paid. Their research into weight related diabetes and hypertension hinged on being able to observe the weight gain in progress. Participants who answered the call to action were asked to consume an extra 1,000 calories of fast food every day in order to put on the pounds. Since the goal was to understand why some people develop these adverse health conditions it meant that the participants who gained this weight would likely be putting themselves in increased danger of worsening their health. This meant hazard pay.

For meeting the goal of increasing their weight by 5 to 6 percent over the course of 3 months the participants were given up to $3,500. Though it may sound like an easy task, the men and women who joined this project didn’t find it enjoyable for long.

Dr. Samuel Klein, the lead researcher on the project said, “This is not pleasant for them, It’s not easy to stuff your face every day for a long period of time.”

And one of his participants agreed, she said after two weeks, “I could hardly breathe anymore.”^[3]

8 Artsy-Fartsy Fame and Fortune

In the late 19th century a boy named Joseph Pujol discovered he had an odd talent while swimming on a trip with his family. During his swim he had an strange cold sensation inside his gut. Panicked, he went ashore to a private place and watched as liters of water evacuated from his rump. His doctor was unworried and so Pujol didn’t think of it again until years later when encouraged by his friends to repeat the feat. It was then he discovered that this wasn’t a one off event. He had the unusual ability to inhale liquid or air into his rear end and release it on command. From that moment on he began to nurture his newfound talent.

Eventually he put his skills on display as a performer, under the name Le Petomane and began putting on shows. He dazzled his audience with an array of different farts, each one described for the benefit of his fans. A small quiet fart he would liken to a bride on her wedding night and then a messy loud slop of a fart was the same woman two weeks later. A prolonged ten second fart was likened to a dressmaker ripping a cloth in two and he even emulated the blast of a canon with a loud burst from his butt.

“People were literally writhing about,” A journalist described the reaction to his performance. “Women, stuffed in their corsets, were being carried out by nurses which the cunning manager had stationed in the hall.”^[4]

Later in his act he used his talent to smoke two cigarettes at once. In the rousing finish to the show he would play famous tunes on an ocarina using a hose that channeled his farts into wind for the instrument. Le Petomane became an amazing success and at one point was the highest paid performer in all of France. He stayed in show business until after World War I when he retired from the stage to continue life as a baker. He died at the ripe old age of 88.

After his death a medical school in Paris asked to examine his remains to help better understand how his anus performed the miracles it did. His family declined by saying, “there are some things in this life which simply must be treated with reverence.”^[5]

7 Overeating To Success

Everyone loves food, but sometimes we’ll enjoy it a little too much. When our eyes are bigger than our stomach our over consumption can cause an upset stomach, spikes in blood pressure, and lethargy,^[6] not to mention regretting whatever decisions took us to that moment.

But some people take that feeling and conquer it. One such man is Joey Chestnut, who is one of the most successful competitive eaters in the world. He has held records and won competitions the world over, including the feats of eating 32 double patty hamburgers in 38 minutes, eating 74 hotdogs in 10 minutes, and 413 chicken wings in 12 hours.^[7]

His skills at overeating aren’t for nothing. In 2010 Mr. Chestnut earned $218,500 for his eating prowess.^[8] Though he admits that it isn’t always easy. After setting a new world record for hotdog eating in 2018 he said about his body afterward, “It’s not pretty, bro. There have been some double-flushers.”^[9]

6 Burping For Cash

Belching is a sport. The current record for length of a burp stands at 1 minute, 13 seconds, and 57 millisecond. This colossally long belch has gone unchallenged since 2009.^[10] A glorious sport it is, but not really one that pays. To make any money in this competitive field requires being in the right place at the right time. For some fortunate few woman the right place was St. Louis and the right time was in 2014. The call went out for actors to star in a soda company’s new commercial and the skill they needed above all else: burping.^[11]

An ad went up on Craiglist offering to pay $750 for each actor as well as drinks and snacks provided on the day of filming to help coax out the necessary belches.

“Burps of any size are welcome, from small, quiet burps to monstrously loud belches,” The ad read. Thankfully no previous acting experience was required.^[12]

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5 Professionally Popping Pimples

The standard recommendation for pimples is to resist the urge to pop them ourselves, but rather to find an over the counter solution and failing that, to visit a doctor for help. They are after all trained and can perform any required popping in a sterile environment.^[13] Most of us ignore this advice. Despite the risks of scarring or infection, popping our zits is a satisfying, if disgusting experience. Unlike most items on this list though, being employed to perform this task isn’t a limited opportunity career. There are tens of thousands of people being paid to do this disgusting deed. They are skin specialist doctors called dermatologists.^[14]

Not only is this a lucrative career path on its own, paying on average $345,000 a year in the United States,^[15] some doctors take it a step further. Doctor Sandra Lee (aka: Dr. Pimple Popper) hosts a Youtube channel where she displays particularly difficult or fascinating dermatological cases. The channel has more than 6 million subscribers.^[16]

When describing why anyone would want to watch something so gross as the usual fare on her channel she said, “It’s part fascination, part can’t look away, not unlike watching a car accident. There’s also something satisfying in the resolution, like something is being removed that shouldn’t be there and now the skin has been cleansed of an impurity.”^[17]

4 Money in Exchange For Spit

When researchers are trying to make genetic discoveries, the classic approach would be to find people with the disease then look for differences between their DNA and the DNA of someone without the disease. This can be an intensive process to find, communicate with, and finally sample the subject’s DNA for the research. In other cases, some companies rely on huge collections of DNA, with associated data on the donors, to accurately trace the ancestry of a customer, but it can be difficult to maintain a library of DNA from all types of people the world over. People don’t usually line themselves up to give away DNA samples for free.

The answer to these troubles is used by such companies as Genos and DNASimple. These companies will pay you for your spit, or more precisely, the DNA contained within your spit and information about yourself. This data can be used to help match researchers with the right DNA donors easier. DNASimple pays a flat rate of $50 per sample and Genos offers to sequence your genome for around $500 and will then pay you $50—$200 if you’re DNA can be used for a scientific study. While not a livelihood, there is more and more money to be made from people’s spit. DNASimple secured a $200,000 start up loan from an investor in recent years and the industry is growing.^[18]

While some are frustrated with the idea of being paid to participate in research, Sharon Terry, CEO of the Genetic Alliance described the situation by saying, “Some people might think it’s bad to put any kind of commerce in health at all, but it’s already in there. We just don’t have any part of it, we patients. Everyone else makes a lot of money.”^[19]

Perhaps the time has come to finally sell a valuable commodity we didn’t know we had—our spit.

3 Bathroom Scouters Paid To Pee

We all need to use the bathroom, usually a few times a day, but sometimes desperately. When we’re in a new city or an unfamiliar part of town and the urge strikes, where do we go? Where’s the nearest bathroom? Will it be clean? Is there a bidet or toilet paper? Do they charge? There’s no time to answer these questions when we’re holding back the floodgates! And with no guidance there’s no telling what unholy gas station horror or side of the road bush we may be forced to use.

It turns out, knowing the location and quality of nearby bathrooms is a service worth paying for and there are apps that will indeed pay for that kind of information. One app called Toiletfinder paid $20 for some restroom reviews and $100/week for regular copy writers. Writers contribute anonymously so that their subject matter can’t be used against them by friends and family (what’s wrong with writing about pee?). Reviews are accompanied by a star rating from the reviewer and GPS location to help future bathroom goers to find the right place at the right time.^[20] Apps like this and other have hundreds of thousands of bathrooms logged and reviewed the world over.^[21]

2 Regurgitating A Living

No one. No one likes to vomit. The acid, the half digested food, the smell—Nothing about the experience is enjoyable and this disgusting bodily function is something most of us would do all in our power to avoid. What goes in should not come back out the same way, but for one man, regurgitating what he had swallowed was a novelty he discovered as a child when he needed to hide coins from other children. It turns out, no one looks for your money in your stomach. He soon found that he could easily bring back up just about anything.

This was a skill he put to good use in show business. Mr. Stevie Starr has used his ability to put on acts on television shows like America’s Got Talent and late night programs with Jay Leno and David Letterman as well as live tours. Among the objects he swallows are light bulbs, coins, thumbtacks, and billiard balls,^[22] but a performance of just swallowing and unswallowing would quickly grow redundant. Taking it to higher levels, he also swallows a cup of sugar, followed by a cup of water, then he’ll regurgitate the sugar—dry as a bone. He’ll also swallow ten numbered coins then ask the audience to choose the order they return, sometimes two at a time. What he swallows and regurgitates isn’t limited to the inanimate. In some performances he’ll consume two live fish at the start of the show and bring them back out, perfectly healthy, at the end.^[23]

Vomiting up the contents of our stomach is usually the worst way to spend an evening, but watching someone else do it is well worth the money Mr. Starr earns.

1 Professional Finger Licker Wanted

In polite company, licking our fingers after a meal is usually frowned upon, but for a company that has advertised “finger licking good chicken” for years the habit was a badge of honor. The restaurant chain Kentucky Friend Chicken has recently started a campaign to find the most highly qualified finger licker in the world to be the new face for their upcoming ad series. Their announcement on twitter asked, “Have you ever caught yourself licking your fingers and thought to yourself ‘I’d look decent doing that on a billboard?’”

This ongoing search is asking perspective professional finger lickers to submit a twitter with the hashtag #KFCFRYERME with an 280 character or less explanation of why their finger licking skills are worthy of the cause.^[24] Unlike so many items of this list, this one could still be about you.

In a follow up tweet to the announcement KFC added, “For the love of God; please keep it PG.”^[25]

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Bribery is generally viewed in a negative context. There are different levels of bribery, of course. Convincing your child to be quiet by giving them candy is a different bribe than paying off the local police so you can continue to run a drug empire. Shades of gray, you might call it. 

Despite the mostly negative association we have with the act of paying someone to achieve some kind of desirable outcome for yourself, there have been times when bribes turned out great. In fact, once in a while, bribes end up supporting a very good cause.

10. Geddy Lee’s Parents Were at Auschwitz, Where His Father Bribed Guards to Give Gifts to His Mother

For many people of a certain generation, the band Rush qualifies as Canada’s greatest contribution to the world of rock ‘n’ roll and it’s hard to deny they had a great impact on music, even years later. Their late drummer Neil Peart is still considered one of the best in history.

Lead singer Geddy Lee is well known for his songwriting and his unique vocals but he has a fascinating history as well. Lee’s parents were born in Poland and hadn’t even entered their teens when the Second World War broke out. Both of them were taken to Auschwitz, just after they’d met, at around age 12.

Germans separated prisoners in the camps by sex so the two could only see each other but not spend time together. Lee’s father would bribe the guards to ensure that Lee’s mother had things she needed, like pairs of shoes.

Eventually they were split up and sent to different camps. At war’s end, Lee’s father found his mother at Bergen-Belsen and they actually got married in the camp, which by then was a “displaced person’s camp.” Later they moved to Canada and started a family. 

There’s no way to know if bribing the guards had any effect on the eventual outcome but there’s little doubt Lee’s father made a nightmare at least a little more tolerable for his mother as a result. 

9. Kevin Bacon Bribes Wedding DJs to Not Play Footloose

Kevin Bacon holds a unique place in pop culture. He’s the only actor ever to be the basis of a game that seeks to link literally anyone in the world to him in as few connections as possible. But he’s also been a well-liked actor since the 1980s and has appeared in many memorable roles. You’d be hard-pressed to argue that any of them are more well known than his role in Footloose and it’s likely Bacon would agree.

The movie Footloose also gave the world the song Footloose, which was written by singer Kenny Loggins in collaboration with the screenwriter Dean Pitchford. The song is very much tied to the film as a result and, in turn, to Kevin Bacon and the role he played.

Now that the movie and song are decades old, Bacon has had his fill. To avoid further contact with it in public, Bacon has admitted to bribing DJs at weddings to not play the song in his presence. That way the pressure to re-enact his famous Footloose dance sequence doesn’t have to weigh on his shoulders or make a scene on someone else’s special day. So what does it set Bacon back to avoid a blast from his musical past? A crisp $20 bill. 

8. NY Transit Authorities Were Bribed $40,000 by French Connection Director William Friedkin 

The 1971 film The French Connection won an Oscar for director William Friedkin and, to this day, is lauded for the incredible car chase scene. The movie was the definition of guerrilla filmmaking which, if you’re not familiar, means it wasn’t entirely legal or safe in its execution.

The infamous car chase takes place on the streets of New York at speeds up to 90 miles an hour. So what, right? Well, Friedkin didn’t have any permits or permission to do that so it was a real car driving in real traffic at that speed. There were other actors involved, and efforts made to limit danger, but most of that traffic was just normal drivers going about their day.

The chase involves a subway train on an overhead track and that wasn’t legally in the film, either. Friedkin bribed someone from NY Transit with $40,000 and a ticket to Jamaica to escape punishment after the fact. According to Friedkin that was a massive part of the budget. The transit official took his payoff and literally moved to Jamaica.

The result of the bribe is one of the best car chase scenes ever and a fantastic, critically acclaimed film.

7. Antoine Augustin Parmentier Let Thieves Bribe His Potato Guards to Popularize the Food

How do you convince people to eat something they don’t want to eat? For most people the answer probably involves cheese sauce, but back in the late 1700s Antoine Augustin Parmentier had to be more creative in his quest to get people to try potatoes.

When potatoes first came to Europe they were shunned. At best they were considered animal feed, but Parmentier was a visionary who saw the tuber’s potential. Still, he needed to convince everyone that they’d misjudged the potato. After serving dinners for the upper class, he came up with a clever ruse to get the average citizen on board as well..

Parmentier paid guards to protect his potato crop. This would make people believe the crop had some value they weren’t aware of. But he also paid those guards to take bribes from thieves and let them take the potatoes because nothing is more desirable than something you’re told you can’t have. His plan worked and potatoes became a staple of the French diet. 

6. Cops in Thailand are Bribed to Not Accept Bribes

Law enforcement is far from infallible and this is a worldwide truth. Corruption is rampant on many levels and in Thailand, bribing police is incredibly common. Corruption has been described as “ingrained” in Thailand. Tourist blogs even tell you to “tip” Thai police and then clarify that it’s not technically a bribe but, you know, it is. 

Traffic police in Thailand are the most well known for taking part in this culture of bribery as traffic in Thailand, in general, is a nightmare. So if police pull a driver over for speeding or failing to signal, the driver can often get out of a fine by slipping the cop a few buckets to supplement their notoriously low salary. The problem got so bad that the Thai government started bribing police to not accept bribes. 

Any government officials in Thailand who accept bribes are officially subject to potentially facing life in prison. So the 2014 rule to offer rewards of up to 10,000 Thai baht, or about $280 USD, was seen as a much better alternative.

5. Simon and Garfunkel’s First Single Aired on Radio Thanks to the Payola System

Simon and Garfunkel have sold tens of millions of albums over their career and stand as one of the most popular duos of all time. That fame had to start somewhere, of course, and the pair needed to get their foot in the door. That meant bribery.

Their first single “Hey, Schoolgirl” was recorded when the guys were just 15. It was released as a single in 1957 but it needed airplay. Their label bribed DJ Alan Freed $200 to get him to play the song on his nightly radio show and it quickly moved into regular rotation, kicking off the band’s career.

4. George Washington Bribed Voters with Booze

Political bribery is one of the most infamous kinds of bribery out there and it’s something we try to keep control of, or at least we pretend to. Whether it’s true or not, no one likes to have to admit that their government officials are bought, so most democracies make a show of being against such things.

Back in the day, maybe the rules were a little more lax and maybe some low key bribes were a little more tolerable. For instance, while a stack of cash might have been frowned upon, surely a few drinks between friends wasn’t.

George Washington believed that a buzzed electorate was a supportive electorate and his first election win was attributed to supplying 144 gallons of various kinds of booze to voters. After losing an earlier election that he ran dry, he took advantage of the local pubs to bribe the voters with a half gallon of drink for every vote he received, which was enough to get him into office. 

3. Lincoln Bribed Congressmen with Patronage to Support Anti-Slavery

Many people would likely list Lincoln among the best presidents of all time. His legacy is of not just a hell of a dresser but the Great Emancipator and a stand up sort of guy. But that didn’t mean he was above greasing the wheels of anti-slavery with some bribes to reach his goals. Sometimes you have to get your hands dirty if you want to make good things happen.

In Lincoln’s case, he wasn’t doling out cash necessarily, but he had a way with patronage. In order to get support for his anti-slavery positions, Lincoln had to make promises. We call it patronage because that sounds fairly civilized, but it’s bribes. Lincoln promised favors and lucrative appointments to congressmen and others in key positions if they agreed to support him. This was done through proxies and he didn’t necessarily deal with anyone directly but the effect was the same.

2. The Bacon Memes Were the Result Of Pork Industry Bribes

If you’ve been online since at least 2009, this will seem like a betrayal of everything you hold dear. Remember when bacon was a meme? For a short while you couldn’t swing a cat on the internet without hitting some kind of bacon something. The LA Times wrote articles about it and bacon-infused products like bacon soap and bacon vodka were sold all over the place. 

What seemed like it might have been a weirdly obsessive but organic love of cured meat that soon became annoying overkill was nothing of the sort. This was a pre-planned pork attack on all of us, funded by piggy bribes. 

The health food craze of the 80s gutted the pork industry. Pork bellies used to be a reliable commodity, and they tanked brutally because no one wanted to eat salty, fatty things anymore. So the Pork Board set to work on restaurants, trying to convince them to produce new dishes that used bacon to “enhance” flavor. 

Because bacon was so cheap, restaurants took to it quickly, especially with pork industry lobbyists paying to get it out there. It was an easy way to make bad food taste like something at a low cost. This gave rise to things like Wendy’s Baconator and like-minded fast food offerings. That spread to food bloggers and then to novelty sites that would offer a range of quirky bacon offerings in an over-the-top effort to make a buck off the concept. 

1. England Spent $200 Million in Bribes to Keep Spain Out of WWII

There’s a bit of hyperbole involved in the name “World War” since the entire world was not involved in either war. A handful remained neutral, and it’s very debatable how neutral they remained, but officially they were not meant to be involved. One of the largest countries to hold this status was Spain. 

You could make a case that if Spain was an active participant in the war, a lot of battles would have gone differently, but the reason they remained on the sidelines was almost strictly business. The fact that England paid out $200 million in bribes was a big part of that.

Spain assured Britain that the country was in danger of siding with the Nazis unless cash kept flowing, so money sent through Swiss accounts was paid out. The money was alleged to have gone towards arresting various parties who would be trying to convince Franco to join on Hitler’s, but there’s no way to know how true that might have been.

We’ve scoured the internet for ten of the most unusual modes of travel that money can buy (either now or in the not-too-distant future), and ranked them in order of price.

10. Hoverboard (concept)

While it’s clear by now that Marty McFly’s 2015 must have been on an alternate timeline, hoverboards are actually possible on our own. In fact, it was in 2015—our 2015—that Lexus advertised the SLIDE, a bamboo and carbon fiber floating skateboard. In a 37-second viral teaser video, we saw a real-life hoverboard hovering inches above the ground.

Ok, so it was only a prototype concept, but the technology does exist. Maglev trains have depended upon it for more than a hundred years. The trick is a magnetic surface. A Kickstarter campaign in 2014, for the Hendo hoverboard, also used magnets to levitate. But the Lexus SLIDE has a superconductor and can hover on magnets in concrete. And while we don’t have magnets in concrete as standard, you could build your own hoverboard skate park. How much it’ll set you back isn’t really clear, but it’s probably the least on this list.

The only downsides are the 11.5kg weight and the need to top up the liquid nitrogen coolant every 10 minutes or so. On the other hand, that liquid nitrogen does emit some cool-looking vapors from the board.

9. Tron Lightcycle

Being virtual reality, the Tron Lightcycle has been possible for a long time. But only recently has it been rendered in the meatspace. Well, kind of.

Don’t expect to leave any light walls like a real-life game of Snake, or to ride at speed, but do expect to be the envy of any Tron fans you pass. Built by Parker Brothers Concepts, it’s a spectacularly faithful carbon fiber and fiberglass replica with dual hubless wheels and plenty of lights. There’s even a Tron helmet included in the $35,000-55,000 price tag (though no spandex jumpsuit). 

Like Tron itself, the Lightcycle has spawned two generations. The first, of which only five were ever made (in five different colors), was gas-powered, while the second is all-electric.

8. Hoverbike

Channeling Star Wars, the Aero-X hoverbike crosses pretty much any terrain without slowing down—although 45 miles per hour doesn’t leave much to slow down to. Powered by two horizontal propellers, it’s really just a hovercraft the size of a car but it looks and feels like a bike. It also reaches heights of up to 20 feet. The company behind it, Los Angeles-based Aerofex, calls it a “crossover vehicle.”

As for who might want one at $85,000, they vaguely suggested ranchers, emergency services, and border patrols. Let’s face it, though; this is a toy for the rich. 

Although there’s an emphasis on minimizing noise, emissions might be a problem. To avoid the propeller blades seizing, Aerofex installed a rotary engine instead of a conventional piston one. But, as the car manufacturer Mazda learned the hard way, rotary engines are hard to make clean and efficient.

7. Jetpack

Although still in their infancy, jetpacks (and jet suits and belts) are very much here. It’s just that you can’t afford one. In 2015, the CEO of JetPack Aviation zipped around the Statue of Liberty with a jetpack capable of reaching 10,000 feet a speed of 55 knots. The company’s newer model, the JB-10, almost doubles that ceiling and speed. But many other companies are at it, with some offering full customization. Wearable jets are also being tested by the military and emergency services—no pilot’s licence required.

Prices are in the hundreds of thousands. Mexico-based TAM, for example, sells a “rocket belt” for a quarter of a million dollars, while UK-based Gravity Industries has an Iron Man style jet suit for £380,000 (almost half a million dollars).

Don’t get too envious, though. This is one of those rare occasions where the rich serve as guinea pigs for the rest of us, trialing a piece of technology that’s still pretty deadly. It’s easy to forget what a jetpack is: “a jet engine strapped to your back”. There’s plenty of room for things to go wrong, which is why pilots still have to wear tethers. Flight time is also disappointing—typically just seconds or minutes.

6. Flying Car

There’s a reason flying cars haven’t taken off. Unfortunately, the compromises involved in merging roadworthiness and airworthiness result in barely accomplishing either—and they typically cost more than a plane and a car combined. But that doesn’t mean you can’t buy one.

In 2023, the FAA approved Alef Auronautics’ Model A for testing. Although it’s just the latest in a decades-long tradition (of flops, mostly), it is, say the makers, the first flying vehicle to actually drive like a car. A very slow car, that is, with a top speed of 25 miles per hour. On the plus side, though, it does have vertical takeoff. It’s also 100% electric, with a range of 110 miles by air and 200 miles by road. The idea will be to fly whenever speed is required.

Alef expects to start selling the first flying car by 2025, at $300,000 each. If you’re interested, you can pay $150 to get on the waiting list or $1,500 for a priority spot.

5. Amphibious Limo

Cars you can drive on water and land might seem pointless to us—especially as they compromise on speed. But for the rich, they solve an old problem: getting to and from a superyacht in style. Usually this involves climbing into a dinghy or speedboat and climbing back out at the shore like any common peasant. With an amphibious vehicle, transitioning from sea to land would be seamless.

Not surprising, then, that most amphibious cars are designed with the wealthy in mind. Nouvoyage’s $2 million Limousine Tender 33 is a case in point. 33 feet long, it’s luxuriously furnished (in that horrible corporate way the rich seem to like) with seating for 12, state-of-the-art air-conditioning, retracting roof, gull-wing entry, and a toilet. It can also travel up to 30 knots on water and 85 mph on land—good enough for “making an entrance” as Nouvoyage sycophantically put it, “whether you’re arriving at a film premier in Cannes or a dinner reservation in Les Beaux.” Yeah, or an island full of sex-trafficked teenagers.

4. Personal Blimp

For 20 years, Lockheed Martin was secretly building an airship—a helium-filled blimp capable of floating for 1,400 nautical miles at a max speed of 60 knots. Thanks to its hovercraft-like air cushion landing system (ACLS), it can land on a variety of surfaces, including water, and you don’t even need to use mooring ropes; it’s held in place by a vacuum. 

Unfortunately for the war profiteer, nobody was interested and they gave up trying to sell it. But airships are probably the future. Another company, Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV), already has plenty of buyers for its Airlander 10, priced at $50 million. 

They’re not the fastest way to get around, with a cruising speed of 80 miles per hour, but they are much greener than a jet. And for some the slower pace may be appealing. In any case, HAV conceives of the Airlander as a fast, flying superyacht, not a slow, bulky aircraft. There’s plenty of space on board for luxurious lounges, suites, offices, spas, sushi counters, and cargo holds—making it ideal for long-distance cruises, camp-hopping safaris, trips to the North Pole, and sex parties.

3. Private Train

Although exceedingly rare, some railcars in America are privately owned and run. One belongs to former Amtrak CEO Wick Moorman, who refurbished his 1948 Sandy Creek observation car with bedrooms, a kitchen, and a lounge—effectively making it an RV on rails. Another, an old Pullman sleeper car, belongs to the president of the American Association of Private Railroad Car Owners, whose members join railcars once a year for an all-private cross-country trip. Otherwise, private railcars are hooked onto public trains headed in the desired direction. It’s kind of like train-hopping but legal, boring, and expensive: $3.67 per mile, plus storage of $1,800 per month.

Since 2018, Amtrak has actively discouraged the niche mode of travel, saying it causes “significant operational distraction” and delays paying customers on scheduled services. The solution, of course, is to run your own train. 

Enter the $350 million G Train, which, in theory, lets you ride the rails anywhere in the world. This 1,312-foot locomotive—purpose-built as opposed to refurbished—has a total of 14 cars, some with fold-out wings for outdoor dining. There’s also space on board for your fancy cars and motorbikes. Best of all, the shell is made of technical glass which can be switched from transparent to opaque, depending on whether you want to take in the sights or hide your depravity.

2. Luxury Submarine

When it comes to privacy, the rich get nautical. From seasteading to sex islands, the ocean’s where it’s at. Of course, in the age of spy satellites, a surface yacht won’t cut it; a luxury submarine is much better.

Capable of sailing the world Captain Nemo style (but as an evil scumbag fat cat), the 928-foot Migaloo M7 is almost twice the length of the Russian Typhoon, the world’s largest nuclear submarine. Its diesel-electric engines have a range of 1,000 miles between fueling, and it can dive to 1,500 feet. 

There’s no expense spared on board. The M7 has everything from helipads to swimming pools, hangar bays to viewing rooms. It also comes with numerous tenders, including a hot air balloon, SUVs, and that amphibious limousine—as well as minisubs for exploring ruins, shipwrecks, and caverns. The makers don’t specify the price, but it’s estimated to be around $2.3 billion, which, according to Migaloo CEO Christian Gumpold, would make it “the most expensive private object” ever sold. “Would” is the keyword there; the submarine hasn’t been built as the builders are waiting for buyers. What’s stopping them? Among other things, it’s the possible safety concerns; these are uncharted waters in every sense of the term. There’s also the cost of operation, including a crew and regular maintenance. 

1. Nuclear-Powered Mega-Jet (concept)

Although conceived as a flying cruise ship, it’s easy to imagine Tony Holmsten’s nuclear-powered, AI-controlled mega-jet (nicknamed “Flytanic”) in the hands of a megalomaniac. Think Doctor Robotnik’s Wing Fortress in Sonic. 

Capable of cruising for years at a time, the Studio Ghibli-inspired behemoth resembles a jumbo jet on steroids—complete with a vast central dome and tail section viewing deck. There’s space on board for 5,000 guests, or slaves, along with everything you might expect of a cruise ship: swimming pools, restaurants, theaters, sports and medical facilities, and so on. It’s so big that regular aircraft could land on top without trouble. 

Although just a concept for now, all the mega-jet needs is a small enough nuclear reactor. And, according to Hashem Al-Ghaili, who researched and animated Holmsten’s vision, this could be within reach in the next two decades.

Desperate times call for desperate measures—what would you do to make some money if you really needed it? There are unusual paths to financial success, and some people get very creative. They see a unique gap in the market and take the opportunity to fill it. It’s a strange world, and things only get more interesting with each passing day. So why wouldn’t someone’s money-making scheme follow the trend? Here are the top 10 weirdest things people sell and actually make money on.

10 Virginity

Well, sex literally sells! Sex is a mostly taboo subject that initiates debates throughout the world. However, there is no doubt that virginity is a prize and something people hold in high regard across many communities. For men, getting to sleep with a virgin may be something of a conquest. For ladies, it may be a sacred act reserved only for the special person they choose.

But some women keep their virginity and then sell it to the highest bidder. With the amount that they get, they can set themselves up for a more comfortable life if they plan well. A night with a stranger may mean paying off student loans, opening an education fund, or a business downpayment. One lady actually sold her virginity for $3 million.    

9 Air

Air is free, found in nature, and just about everywhere, right? That isn’t always the case, depending on which part of the world you are in. Some parts are so polluted that some individuals would do just about anything to get to breathe in some fresh air. The cost isn’t such a big concern in these cases.

Air farming in fresh spaces is a solution to help those in polluted countries. Some enterprising people in the U.K. and Canada are cashing in by selling air, quite literally. For customers in China, air in a bottle is a prized possession and such a relief to their lungs, which are usually exposed to smog.

8 Toilet Paper

Answering the “call of nature” should not really be a luxurious experience. Or should it? Some may go to the bathroom just for some peace and quiet. They’ll stare at the wall or scroll on their phone while they do their business. But apparently, alone time isn’t the only priority when people go to the bathroom. Some people want to use nothing but the best, even when it comes to toiletries.

Some toilet paper manufacturers make luxury black, camouflaged, or Sudoku tissue paper to appeal to different markets. An example of the most expensive toilet paper is Toilet Paper Man’s 22 karat gold tissue, worth $1.3 million. There is a demand for this tissue in Dubai, and it is considered the perfect choice for golden toilet seats, which are more like thrones.

7 Human Waste

Although this may sound crazy, one man’s poop may be a life-saver for another. Some patients suffer from Clostridium difficile, a bacterial infection that is stubborn and fatal and responsible for 15,000 American deaths in a year. Doctors can treat this with a fecal transplant. Healthy microbes from the human waste of a healthy person are placed inside the intestines of the patient. This helps remove Clostridium difficile from their system. In 2015, one researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) sold his stool and earned around $1,000.

But not anyone can qualify to be an OpenBiome stool donor. You need to pass a thorough clinical assessment and be free of any infections. You also cannot have traveled to a country in which there is a risk of contracting diseases. You cannot be obese and should not have used any antibiotics or illicit drugs within a specific time frame.

6 Professional Mourning Services

Funerals and burials are somber affairs, and the ones mostly affected by the loss are usually the deceased’s loved ones. However, some people are actually making money selling professional mourning services. They put up an act and cry on demand.

Professional mourners research the person who passed on so they can get to ‘know them’ and talk a bit about them as they mourn. Professional mourning services are common in African, Asian, and Hispanic countries. However, they are also gaining popularity across Europe and the U.S. Some are known to charge different rates for crying and doing other activities such as rolling on the ground, threatening to jump into the grave, and actually jumping into the grave.

5 Used Underwear

To some, handling or having someone’s underwear may be down-right disgusting. However, to others, this is a fetish, and they may be willing to pay a premium price to get ahold of someone else’s used underwear. Apparently, there is a considerable demand for the undergarment. The grosser they are, the bigger the demand.

This creepy business thrives on the sale of used women’s underwear. You get a better price if the underwear is tight-fitting, worn out, and has weird stains. Gross, right? A pair goes for around $50 bucks at a fair price. What makes it more bizarre is the vast market available for these products. Japan had vending machines just for this business. Of course, the government shut it down, but only on concerns that it was men that were wearing the female undergarments.

4 Breastmilk

Yes, mothers vend breastmilk at a reasonable price, and it’s a lucrative business that has existed for quite a while. While this may seem suitable for infants whose mothers can’t breastfeed, it still tops the list of strange things people sell for cash. The World Health Organization advocates that infants should get breastmilk from other healthy mothers in the event their biological mother is unable to produce milk. So, yes, you can make money selling your breast milk. There are sites like onlythebreast.com that facilitate this sale. Still, we can’t completely ignore the concerns about online breast milk customers.

Whether it’s for a full-grown adult with a fetish for human milk, we can’t tell. There are also medical concerns about the health of the lactating mother selling her milk.

3 Selling Real-Life Horror Moments

For most of us, we like to keep our dark moments to ourselves. We seldomly want to remember those times life dealt us a cruel hand. However, for others, this a money-making opportunity. People are actually getting paid to narrate and sell their real-life misery moments to magazines and newspapers. As the old cliché goes, “when life hands you lemons, make lemonade.”

It may not work for everyone, but to some, it’s business as usual. These stories may range from your near-death experience, an illness, or even your spouse’s affair. The prices vary depending on the sensitivity of your story. It gets even creepier when the agencies require that you produce photographs or document proof to validate your story. Of course, they will publish these.

Even though it sounds callous, you can get between $200-$2,000 for a single story. If you are more aggressive with your bargaining skills, you can convince a magazine and a newspaper into a joint deal for your story.

2 Blood Plasma

Plasma is the clear fluid in which other blood components like platelets and red blood cells are suspended. This is why it is different from conventional blood donations. It takes much longer since the doctors have to extract the plasma from the blood. Apart from the fulfillment of knowing you’re helping a sick person somewhere, you also get paid well for it. To sell your plasma, you have to be screened for specific viruses, be 18 years old and weigh more than 110 lbs. If you are of the right weight and healthy, you can make two donations per week.

For each donation, hospitals pay anywhere from $20-$50. Hospitals pay you depending on the amount of plasma you can donate. The amount of plasma you can safely donate is directly proportional to your weight.

1 Selling Weird Jewelry on Etsy

Conventionally, jewelry is supposed to be beautiful and unique and probably shiny. However, there is an equally huge market for jewelry that is down-right weird and creepy. On Etsy, hundreds of sellers make creepy jewelry out of unconventional material like deer teeth.

Even more astounding is the market for such jewelry. You’ll see soap in the shape of mutilated human body parts and denture-inspired earrings and finger rings on the site. Now with the advances and capabilities of 3D printing, the array of weird stuff on Etsy just got bigger. Sellers get quite an impressive passive income selling bizarre jewelry.

“If I had a million dollars, I’d…” Many a wistful and wishful discussion begins with some version of that sentiment, uttered with the understanding that we’d put our good fortunes to good use. We’d travel, we’d invest, we’d retire. We wouldn’t, say, have a jewel embedded in our skull or fund hamster fights, to preview two of the following fiscal fiascos.

From the profligate to the unprofitable to the just plain stupid, here are ten examples of money most of us would have spent far more responsibly.

Top 10 Weirdest Things People Sell And Actually Make Money On

10 Dunce of Diamonds

Any sentence that references rappers and jewelry is likely to detail a questionable-at-best expenditure, but this one takes the cak… uh, carat: Rapper Lil Uzi recently had a $24 million diamond implanted in his forehead.

His reason? He was worried that he’d misplace the jewel were it set in something more conventional, like a ring. So basically a guy who couldn’t trust himself to hang on to a $24 million ring trusted himself enough to have a $24 million diamond sewn into his head.

According to Simon Babaev of New York-based jeweler Eliantte & Co’s, Lil Uzi’s big diamond is secure because jewelers created a “specific mounting that clips and locks in place.” Instead of using stainless steel or surgical-grade steel, Babaev said the team did everything with precious metals. “There’s a whole mechanism involved, it’s not a standard piercing. A specific piece and part were both engineered with millimeter precision to get this put on him,” he said. That’s a lot of brainpower for something so brainless.

Reassuringly, Babaev insists that an expert team put their heads together before Gorilla Gluing a jewel into this humble gent’s head. “We made sure that prior to getting anything done that Uzi brought someone in to consult on everything. We didn’t just do this randomly.”

And don’t worry, said Babaev: the procedure is not dangerous. “As long as you maintain it well and have good upkeep, it’s perfectly fine. It’s as safe as any other piercing.” Babaev did not comment on the “safety” of someone inevitably cutting Lil Uzi’s head open while he sleeps to steal a $24 million diamond.

9 Brazil’s Ghost Stadium

The world has no shortage of poorly conceived stadiums. In England, libraries could be filled with the amount of copy dedicated to trashing London Stadium, home to the West Ham football club. Florida’s Tropicana Field is home to the Tampa Bay Rays, who play baseball in a domed stadium whose roof isn’t high enough for pop flies and is painted the color of (you guessed it) a baseball.

However, the most monetarily moronic venue in the world might be Brazil’s Arena da Amazonia. Conveniently located in the middle of the Amazon, the venue was constructed in advance in the 2014 World Cup at a cost of about $300 million. Testament to the country’s exemplary safety standards, three workers died during construction, which took an onerous four years.

Arena da Amazonia was used for four matches during the World Cup, then a few more soccer matches for the 2016 Summer Olympics. Since then, the 40,000-seat stadium typically draws fewer than 1,000 spectators for local matches. Its operating costs outpace its revenue more than threefold.

Arena da Amazonia certainly isn’t alone in its status as a money-wasting sports venue built to host a lone international event. Other such prestige infrastructure that now sit largely unused include Montreal’s funds-depleting Olympic Stadium and Beijing’s gaudy Bird’s Nest, the primary venue for the 2008 Summer Olympics.

8 Rodent Wrestling

For more than two decades, researchers at Northwestern University in Illinois received National Institutes of Health funding to watch hamsters fight each other. The project – which is probably even cooler if you’re stoned – was reportedly granted more than $3 million, including over $300,000 in 2015 alone. That’s a hell of a lot of rodent royal rumbles.

Some of these highly educational (and even more highly hilarious) experiments have involved a sort of home turf ‘roid rage test: hamsters were injected with steroids, then had another hamster placed in his cage to see if the drugged rodents were more aggressive when protecting their territory. In other contests, a teetotaling hamster was pitted against a combatant shot up with cocaine.

Other tests investigated whether becoming a “trained fighter” through two weeks of face-offs made the critters more aggressive. The study led to one of the greatest thesis headlines in academic history: “Prior fighting experience increases aggression in Syrian hamsters: implications for a role of dopamine in the winner effect.”

The experiments ceased after animal activists with no sense of humor pressured the university to eliminate the program. Unfortunately for the coked up hamsters, no funding was available for rodent rehab.

7 Crippling College Debt? Thy Name is Mudd

As in Harvey Mudd College of Claremont, California.

The two most expensive universities in the United States are (1) the University of Chicago and (2) Columbia. Both are top-ten academically accredited “write your own ticket” institutions, meaning a degree from either gives graduates such tremendous advantages that shelling out north of $300,000 for a four-year diploma turns into a sound investment.

The third most expensive college is another household name instantly recognizable for its academic excellen… oh wait, sorry. It’s Harvey Mudd College, a $79,539-per-year institution of higher learning that few people have ever heard of.

Granted, Harvey Mudd College has a specialty: its curriculum focuses largely on science and engineering. Still, plenty of colleges with more recognizable names offer such programs, without the risk of a would-be employer glancing at a graduate’s resume and thinking: “he went WHERE now?”

An honorable mention goes to Scripp’s College, an all-women’s school whose $77,588 annual tuition makes it the sixth most expensive in America despite a similar lack of notoriety.

6 A Legendary Box Office Disaster

In 2017, Warner Brothers Studios released “Arthur: Legend of the Sword,” an epic fantasy action/adventure film directed and co-written by Guy Ritchie. A tribute to the famous king and his Knights of the Round Table, Legend of the Sword was intended as the first of a six-movie series.

The goal was Fast & Furious on horseback – a Medieval answer to lucrative, long-running cinema franchises. To launch the endeavor, Warner Bros. gave Ritchie and his filmmaking team a long leash: a whopping $175 million production budget.

Critics weren’t sold. Legends of the Sword sports a dismal 30% approval rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, whose critical consensus reads, “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword piles mounds of modern action flash on an age-old tale – and wipes out much of what made it a classic story in the first place.”

The moviegoing public concurred. On its debut weekend in the US, Legends of the Sword finished third among all films, taking in just $15 million across 3,200 screens. That’s a lot of empty thrones in the theaters. The studio ultimately recouped just $25 million from its investment, making Legends of the Sword the most money-losing film of all time.

Rounding out the top three historic movie money-losers are (#2) 2003’s “Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas,” which lost $125 million; and (#3) 2012’s “John Carter,” which lost $122 million.

5 Dumpster Diving for Dividends

In 2013, James Howells, an IT worker living in the UK, was cleaning out his house. He had two identical hard drives, and figured he could stand to part with one. He drove to the landfill in Newport, South Wales and discarded it.

Howells was an early adopter of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Amassing 7,500 bitcoins when it was new and inexpensive, he’d stashed his crypto-cash onto a hard drive as an investment. Fortunately for Howells, by 2013 each bitcoin was worth $17,000, meaning he was cyber-sitting on a nest egg of over $125 million.

Unfortunately for Howells, the cryptographic “private key” needed to access his bitcoin windfall was in… you guessed it… the hard drive he’d just dropped at a landfill.

Eight years later, Howells’ trashed trove is worth an eye-popping $280 million. To this day, local authorities have refused his pleas to search the landfill in search of his buried treasure, citing environmental and funding concerns. Attempting to alleviate the latter issue, Howells has offered to donate 25% of the haul — some $71 million — to a “Covid Relief Fund” for the city if he manages to dig up the hard drive.

As of late January, the Newport City Council has rejected Howells’ nine-figure scavenger hunt, with no signs of budging. “The cost of digging up the landfill, storing and treating the waste could run into millions of pounds, without any guarantee of either finding it or it still being in working order,” a town council spokesman said. Howells, it seems, is shit-coin out of luck.

4 So Dumb They Made It A Day

The most celebrated day in American sports is April 15. That’s the date in 1947 that Jackie Robinson took the field as a Brooklyn Dodger, breaking baseball’s color barrier and truly making the game America’s national pastime.

The most mocked day in American sports is probably July 1. That’s the day that, each year, the New York Mets pay a player more than a million dollars… despite the fact that he hasn’t played a game this CENTURY.

The story goes like this: By 1999, the Mets had pretty most had it with Bobby Bonilla, a big-money bust who never lived up to his hype. The team decided to part ways with the aging third baseman, despite still owing him $5.9 million for the upcoming 2000 season.

But instead of simply buying out his contract and being done with him, the Mets opted for an arcane agreement in which payments would be deferred until 2011, as if $6 million would make or break a franchise worth half a billion bucks per 2002 figures.

The deferment included an 8% annual interest accruement. As a result, Bonilla has received about $1 million each July 1 – known throughout baseball as Bobby Bonilla Day – since 2011, and will continue to receive annual instalments until 2035. Upon the deal’s completion, Bonilla will be 72 years old and the Mets will have paid out nearly $30 million to defer $5.9 million.

3 Bloomberg or Bust

It was late 2019 and, in the US, things weren’t going well for the Democratic Party establishment. The assumed frontrunner, former Vice President Joe Biden, was underperforming in both debates and polls, opening the door for Socialist Bernie Sanders to have a path to the presidential nomination.

So onto the political scene strode a towering 5’6” billionaire: media magnate Michael Bloomberg. So centrist that he was a Republican during his three terms as mayor of New York City, Bloomberg devised an unconventional primary strategy: not to compete in the four states with February primaries, but rather focus on Super Tuesday – a date in early March when more than a dozen states vote.

What followed was the most saturating media blitz in the history of politics, American or otherwise. Bloomberg spent $188 million in the 4th quarter of 2019, including $132 million on television ads and $8.2 million on digital platforms. By February, the price tag had exceeded HALF A BILLION dollars – easily the most expensive primary campaign ever.

Unfortunately for Mayor Mike, no one was buying it. Bloomberg finished no higher than third place in any of the 14 Super Tuesday contests, and suspended his campaign shortly thereafter. In the apportioned system of Democratic primary voting, that gave Bloomberg a pathetic 58 of the 1,991 delegates needed to secure the nomination. That translates to
$17,241,379 per delegate.

2 Fast Track to the Poorhouse

In 2008, California announced an ambitious project: a decade-long infrastructure initiative to link its two most prominent cities, Los Angeles and San Francisco, by high-speed rail. The effort was intended to provide an eco-friendly alternative to flying between the southern and northern hubs of the expansive state, and to help close the bullet train gap between the US and other developed nations.

The 2008 price tag was eye-popping: $33 billion, with service commencing in 2020. Cost-benefit questions abounded, including the wisdom of a high-speed rail station in Los Angeles, the most spread out and therefore car-centric city in the country.

Of course, 2020 has now come and (thankfully) gone, with no high-speed rail service in sight. California being California – a red-tape draped state where committees, permits and legal entanglements cause notorious delays – the project’s estimated cost now exceeds $100 billion, with an uncertain completion date.

That works out to about $192 million per mile for the 520-mile rail service. This for a project with no easily-converted customers – Californians have little history with rail ridership, precisely because of the state’s enormity – in a state that is currently $575 billion in debt.

1 A Trillion-dollar Paperweight

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a… wait, yeah it’s a plane. Only it doesn’t go anywhere and cost more than a TRILLION dollars to develop. In late February, the US Air Force admitted what had long been suspected: a warplane more than two decades in the making was a dud.

In the 1990s, the Air Force began designing a next-generation fighter jet designed to be lighter and more sophisticated than its predecessors. The goal was to replace the existing fleet of Cold War-era F-16 fighter planes.

Then the USA’s notorious military industrial complex happened. Over (far too much) time, the lightweight replacement fighter got heavier and more expensive as the Air Force and lead contractor Lockheed Martin packed it with an endless array of bells and whistles. Twenty years later the slow, clunky 25-ton “stealth” aircraft has become the very problem it was intended to solve.

“They tried to make the F-35 do too much,” under-stated Dan Grazier, an analyst with the Project on Government Oversight in Washington, D.C. The final price tag for this bloated bust approached an astounding $1.7 TRILLION. That’s enough to give each of the more than 330 million living Americans $5,000 in cash.

Up next is more of the same: In a profligate nod to 90s nostalgia, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Brown Jr. just announced plans to design a lightweight fighter jet to replace the existing fleet of Cold War-era F-16s. See ya in 2040, General.

Top 10 Bizarre Ways To Make Money From Disgusting Habits

Are you experiencing symptoms of imbalanced frequencies? Low cellular voltage? Psychic aberrations? Well, sit back and relax. There’s a wellness device just for you—even if you don’t feel diseased.

Warning: This list may contain misinformation, if the title wasn’t enough indication already.

10. Spooky2

Did you know that all medical conditions have specific electromagnetic frequencies? If you did, you’ve probably heard of the Rife machine. Invented in the 1920s, it delivers pulses of electromagnetism to cure almost any disease. Unfortunately for the inventor, and possibly for the world, mainstream science was hostile. The earnest engineer Royal Raymond Rife died penniless and embittered, and, in the years since, his already ruined legacy has been further sullied by snake oil salesmen and scandals.

More recently, however, especially during the feeding frenzy of COVID-19, Rife has made a big comeback. Marketed on Facebook as “the affordable Rife device for every home,” Spooky2 Scalar controversially promised to “protect you and your family from this terrible virus.” Supplied with a specific frequency for stopping the disease, as per Rife’s theories, the device came with additional assurance that “scalar energy provides optimal energetic support for the immune system.” The Federal Trade Commission disagreed and sent the company a warning. But don’t let that slow you down. The basic kit only costs $1,600 and comes in a reassuringly rugged briefcase with a cutesy smiling ghost logo.

9. Electropsychometer

Despite what Scientologists would have you believe, the E-meter wasn’t invented by L. Ron Hubbard. The Electropsychometer, as it was originally called, was invented by Volney Mathison, a chiropractor, for use in psychotherapy or analysis. This is ironic given Hubbard’s avowed antipathy to psychotherapists. But he had another use in mind: falsifying serious aberrations or criminality in a user with so-called “discreditable reads”. This is Scientology’s on-ramp.

The Church’s E-meters are assembled at Gold Base, California, a high-security compound under constant armed guard. Each unit usually costs $4,000, but you can pick up non-affiliated Electropsychometers or ex-Scientologist (FreeZone) E-meters for less. Just have a look on eBay.

They’re no more than crude lie detectors, polygraphs lite, galvanometers with tin can electrodes. Powered by leaky batteries, all they do is gauge your skin’s electrical resistance. Hubbard, however, believed (or pretended) the device could eliminate illness—for which the government sued him. Nowadays even the Church admits the device can do nothing by itself. But in the hands of an unscrupulous entrepreneur… Remember: you can’t help anyone until you get rich.

8. BioResonance Machine

Internal organs playing up? Don’t delay! Scan them for imbalanced frequencies and perform a non-linear statistical analysis today! All your organs, cells, and tissues emit electromagnetic waves, don’t you know, and their frequency changes in response to different stresses. In fact (or whatever), each disease has its own “signature resonance frequency”. So it’s possible to scan for pretty much anything without an invasive procedure. Simply attach the electrodes.

Developed (and presumably abandoned) by Russian scientists in the 1990s, this technology has now been perfected by the wizards at OBERON in Florida. Not only can the BioResonance Machine scan your organs for diseases; it can also heal them in no time—in the comfort of your home! It’s just a matter of altering your damaged cells’ frequencies via headphones.

There are no side effects, no chemicals, and no inconvenience, and it works best alongside good nutrition and other treatments… Yes, that’s consistent with placebo—but don’t be a sheep. Another bioresonance company, Rayonex Biomedical, actually has clinical proof of efficacy for cervical spine syndrome, or neck pain. Okay, so pain is easily treated by placebo, and yes, the study was conducted by Rayonex itself, and yes, they seem reluctant to carry out more trials given there’s no evidence—only anecdotes—for the other conditions listed. But did we mention it’s non-invasive?

7. Stimulations VII

Small cup size getting you down? Forget surgery. The Stimulations VII vacuum device can permanently, non-invasively, expand your lilliputian breast tissue. Just place the self-sealing dome over your bust and activate the pump for an enlargement of up to four cup sizes! It can even regrow breasts that were surgically removed by mastectomy. 

Well, that’s if you can find a Stimulations VII on the market. In the early 2000s, one ungrateful customer took the Iowa-based manufacturer, New Womyn, to court for refusing to refund her $2,000. She hadn’t read the small print. By “18-month money-back guarantee,” the company meant she had to use the device for 18 months before she was eligible for a refund. And she would only be eligible if, throughout that time, she’d visited a doctor once a month.

Fair enough. But she kicked up a stink all the same and poor Dan Kaiser, New Womyn’s CEO, was ordered to pay a $90,000 civil penalty.

6. BioPhotonic Scanner

If you’re the sort to wonder how many carotenoids you’ve got in your skin, this device is for you. If you don’t care, this device is also for you—because you should care, what’s the matter with you. Carotenoids are antioxidants that give orange, red, and yellow plants their color. They include beta-carotene, lutein, and lycopene, among others. And, according to experts, they may be one reason why eating fruits and vegetables lowers the risk of disease. What the BioPhotonic Scanner does is check that you’ve eaten enough (which, if you suffer from anterograde amnesia like in 50 First Dates and don’t like keeping a food diary, is no small thing).

Critics say it only measures carotenoids in the skin, and isn’t a reliable measure of your overall antioxidant status. But their only basis for saying so is the total lack of scientific evidence—which means their argument falls down as well. If there’s even a remote chance the BioPhotonic Scanner can measure your antioxidant health, can you really afford not to buy one? Just think of the money you could save at the greengrocer, knowing when to stop buying vegetables.

Plus, if your scan shows sub-optimal carotenoid levels, the same company that sold you the scanner will sell you antioxidant supplements. Beat that for convenience.

5. BioCharger

Sometimes all you need is some more “subtle energy”. Invented by Jim Girard, the BioCharger delivers pulsed harmonics, at a frequency of your choice, to weakly vibrating cells—re-energizing and revitalizing your natural magnetic energy, aligning your mind and body, and raising your cellular voltage. Sure, you can do the same by walking barefoot, releasing negative emotions, listening to pure sounds, and drinking alkaline water, but this is a lot more expensive.

According to the shut-ins at BioCharger, “over 90% of our day is spent indoors, blocked from nature’s vital energies.” They’re not suggesting you go outside; this machine is a high-tech alternative. Anyway, at $15,000, you’ll have to stay in to afford one. Don’t worry about the science; there are loads of testimonials. There’s also a 45-day guarantee, so there’s really nothing to lose besides the non-refundable $250 shipping fee.

With its plasma gas spectrum tubes and menacing red glow, the BioCharger certainly looks the part. Nobody has to know it doesn’t work. You could even make your money back by charging friends for treatment! That’s what Michael Nguyen does; the fecal transplant enthusiast is one of the BioCharger’s most high-profile advocates and even he admits it’s a glorified placebo about as effective as journaling. He still uses it, though, and so should you.

4. Electro Physiological Feedback Xrroid

In 2005, an Oklahoma woman suffering joint and leg pain wisely entrusted her health to the EPFX quantum biofeedback device. That her husband died using it for cancer didn’t matter; she believed it could nurse her back to health. The worst of her husband’s illness—the side effects of chemotherapy—she rightly blamed on the hospital. Neither does it matter that she died the same year.

EPFX salesmen have only good things to say. Even the developer himself, cross-dressing self-described genius William Nelson, who as a teenager helped NASA save Apollo 13, says it cures cancer and AIDS. Stinking rich from selling the things—17,000 of them at 20 grand a piece—he’s got a Budapest mansion with servants and a movie studio. When he’s not on tour giving pep talks to salesmen, he stars in his own movies about saving the world from the villainous FDA. He also has eight doctorates. But that’s all by the by.

EPFX treats the root cause of illness, not just the symptoms. It also has a display to watch healing occur in real time. Arterial cholesterol blockages, for example, appear as little white blobs that shrink and disappear during treatment. Similar to the BioResonance Machine, EPFX detects electrical imbalances (voltage, amperage, electron pressure, and so on) and immediately sets about correcting them.

3. Zapper

Finally, a wellness device that doesn’t bamboozle with a high-sounding sciencey name. Invented by Hulda Clark, doctor of physiology (okay, zoology), the Zapper kills parasites, bacteria, and viruses without harming bodily tissue. It does this by delivering low-voltage electrical zaps through the two supplied handheld electrodes. Not good enough? We can see you’re a sharp one. Why not ride business class with the Orgone Zapper model, which not only zaps but orgone-heals too. Just don’t use a Zapper if you’re wearing a pacemaker! Or pregnant, for that matter, as it can’t tell parasites from babies.

Even if you’re not suffering an infestation, the Zapper may still be for you. Some users report an aura-enhancing effect from just half an hour of use. Clark recommended only seven-minute sessions, but we use it for as long as we like. Just stop when you start seeing burn marks. And show no fear! Sweat can be a problem.

We know what you’re thinking. You can do all this yourself with a car battery, right? But Clark’s Zapper comes with positive offset square wave—and you don’t know what that is, do you?

2. Ozone generator

Hole in the ozone layer, bad. Therefore ozone, good. Therefore pumping the stuff right into your home, even better. It’s unimpeachable reasoning like this that brought us the ozone generator, improving the lives of thousands of investors and salesmen. There are always naysayers, of course: the Environmental Protection Agency, the American Lung Association, the Food and Drug Administration, and various so-called scientists, all of whom insist that ozone is harmful at high concentrations indoors. They’ll tell you it takes years for ozone to eliminate toxins, and that in doing it’ll release a lot more.

But forget about that and think about this: if it’s harmful to us, it’s harmful to parasites—bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens. So there’s really no surer way to banish stink and disease from your home. Besides, ozone is all-natural. Just plug the mechanical discharge unit into the mains and a high-voltage electrical field will do the rest, transforming all your smelly used oxygen into pure, clean ozone.

1. Hyper Dimensional Resonator

This one’s a little different. It’s a radionic time travel device that can help with astral projection by emitting unlimited white chi energy. Invented on a farm in Nebraska in 1981, it’s actually the souped-up version of an earlier prototype, the Sonic Resonator. The main improvement is a caduceus coil electromagnet. Operation is simple. Strap on the time-coil headband, spit in the witness well, add a quartz crystal, place the electromagnet between your legs, and turn the dials to the date you wish to visit. (Both go up to 10.) Then meditate while rubbing the rubbing plate. You should be transported—astrally, unless you happen to be sitting on a grid point or vortex, in which case physically—to your desired spacetime coordinates.

Users commonly find themselves aboard UFOs, in other countries, or in parallel dimensions and time lines. Some have returned with objects, only to see them disintegrate. Other times it’s more subtle. One user, after a seemingly unsuccessful session, woke up feeling strange like he was in the wrong place. His suspicions were confirmed when he opened the fridge and couldn’t find the cookie dough he left there. He called his wife at work and was astonished to hear there wasn’t any there in the first place. Another got to use it with the inventor himself, back in 1989: “When he turned it on, clouds formed in the room, and sparks danced around the chandelier.” At first it seemed like nothing had happened, but when she next sat down to watch her favorite movie, Shane, “dialogue she’d memorized was altered or spoken by different characters.” She said it scared her to death.

But don’t be put off; the Hyper Dimensional Resonator is a wellness device. Consistent use can nurture your spiritual growth. Just don’t get blood in the witness well; it’ll attract demons.

At some point in our lives, we all have to buy a car. Whether it be brand new or second hand, we usually end up going through a dealer. This list is designed to help you save money by not being ripped off by the little tricks that dealers use to maximize their profit and your loss. Be sure to give other tips for saving on a new car in the comments.

This is the most obvious of ways a car dealer makes a profit. The difference between the dealer cost (invoice) and MSRP is typically 5-10%. This may not sound like a ton of mark-up, but when you consider that you’re dealing with thousands of dollars then the profit margin could be quite significant. For example, a car that a dealer pays $30,000 could generate a profit of around three-thousand dollars. And then multiple that times a few hundred cars a month, and a car dealer could make almost a million dollars a month on mark-up alone.

When a dealer sells a new car (not a pre-owned), the sale is RDR’d to the manufacturer (basically informing the manufacturer that one of their units has been sold). Once this sale has been verified, the manufacturer pays the dealer a set amount of money for “hold-back” and advertising. This amount is listed on the invoice in a less-than-obvious location and is often abbreviated/written in a way that a customer will be unable to figure out the information in the event he sees the actual invoice. For example: if an educated customer will only pay a certain percentage over invoice, then that percentage is calculated by the “invoice” price before any “hold-back” or advertising is deducted. Once the deal is funded and the contract is RDR’d, the manufacturer will send the dealer a pretty substantial amount of money (I’ve seen some “hold-back” and advertising fees as much as $1500).

When a person trades in a car, the dealer will surely attempt to undervalue the trade to make an immediate profit, and then a profit later when the trade is sold. The immediate profit comes from what is called the ACV (actual cash value). If a trade is really worth $11,500 (ACV) and the dealer only shows the customer $10, 500, then there is an immediate thousand dollar profit from the start. The trick is to know where a dealer gets his appraisal information (the most common are Black Book and Manheim Auction Reports. Dealers will RARELY match Kelly Blue Book and NADA) and work off that number to get a fair value for your trade. The other means the dealer will make a profit is when he sells your trade in. There are many financial and credit factors that can generate a profit from your trade. Simple example: your trade is bought from the dealer for $10,000. The dealer will then send your car through service and detail and make sure it is prepped for retail and safe to drive (he’ll also insure the car in most instances). Your old car will now be put up for sale for $13,999. Now, here’s where many factors come is based on the potential buyers situation. The lenders will “book out” a car based on a standard process (typically, a program called Dealer-Track will provide access to NADA for the banks and the dealerships to see how much a car can be sold for). Banks will loan a certain percentage of the cars loan value based on the customer’s credit worthiness. Let’s say the car “books out” for $13,125 (this is 100%), and the potential buyer has great credit. The lender will loan up to 135% of the cars value for that customer. Which means the dealer can sell the car to that well-qualified customer for over $17,000 and make a nice profit ($7,000). On the other hand, if a person has poor credit, then the banks will loan less than 100% and the dealer will have to take the deal at a lesser profit, or the customer will have to put some cash down to generate a profit the dealer will agree to.

New and Used cars are “packed.” This is a number that is immediately added to the car (in addition to the already existing mark-up). This is typically money that goes to pay the owner. The amount of pack varies between dealerships, new, used, etc, but I have never seen a “pack” less than $500. I’ve even seen some cars “packed” $1500. Let’s say a dealership sell 250 cars in one month, and the average “pack” is $1000: the owner makes a nice quarter million dollars a month on “pack” alone (3 million a year- not a bad salary).

This is the biggest farce of them all. This is a dollar amount the dealer says goes to pay for the process of handling your paperwork, tag work, title work, tax work, loaner car, etc. The doc fees will fluctuate from dealer to dealer (I’ve seen $299 to $699). This is a legitimate process that does require paying a handful of people for their work, but- in no way does it cost anywhere close to the amount they’re charging. Most of the paperwork can be done is a few minutes and over the phone, internet, fax, etc. The overage naturally goes into management’s pockets.

Bad bad business practice right here. A “bump sticker” is legitimate-looking sticker that the dealer places next to the manufacturer’s window sticker with a higher priced MSRP than the actual MSRP. The dealer will try and justify this added cost by suggesting the car had some special product applied to the paint or the fabric, or some window etching was done, or they’ll try and itemize all the work that needed to be done to get the car prepped for retail (insurance, gas, detail, service, PDI- [post delivery inspection], etc), or they might try and tell you that this car had additional mark up because it’s a “hot item” and people are paying over retail for that car. It’s all a joke and educationally insulting. The theory is once the “bump sticker” is negotiated away, then the customer will feel that he got a pretty substantial discount, when- in fact- he’s simply paid full MSRP for the car: not a very good deal.

When a customer agrees to numbers, they will have to go the F and I office (Finance and Insurance) to finalize the car deal. This is where all the legal forms are signed, etc. However, this is also where a lot of money is made for the dealership. One of the big money makers in the car business comes from the sale of Extended Service Contracts (extended warranty). I would say nine out of ten extended warranties will cover things that are never likely to break. Additionally, you’ll need to pay a deductible (on top of the $1400 dollars you just paid for the warranty) each time you try and use the warranty. The mark up for this product is typically mandated by the state you live in, but you can expect to pay twice its original value. One good thing about an extended service agreement is that most of them are refundable (prorated based on what you haven’t used). Additionally, a certified pre-owned model is typically a better bet than an extended service agreement (because it’s backed by the manufacturer’s name. Extended warranties are typically backed by the private dealer with a lot less public reputation at stake).

Now this is a product that I strongly recommend you buy: it could turn out to worth its weight in gold. However, you don’t have to pay $599 for it at the dealership when you can get it at your local credit union for $150. Basically, GAP insurance satisfies the car loan in the event of theft or total loss. Your insurance company will only pay ACV for your loss, but GAP insurance picks up the “negative equity” you have remaining on your loan. For example: My car is worth $11,000, but I owe $16,000. In the event of a total loss of my car, the insurance company will only pay my lender $11,000 towards the loan leaving me having to come out of my pocket $5000 to satisfy the loan. However, GAP insurance pays the difference and I’m off Scott free to go buy a new car free and clear of any additional payment on the lost car.

A person with good credit should never have to put a down payment towards the purchase of a new car. However, there are some instances where it may be a necessary (too much negative equity in trade, personal need to lower monthly note, etc). But typically, if a customer is satisfied with their payment, and they don’t have a significant amount of negative equity, then the bank should have no problem lending money to a well qualified buyer. Sometimes a salesman or sales manager will say ‘The lender is requiring 20% down,” or they might say “You’re going to have to pay your taxes in cash. The bank will finance the car, but they will not finance any taxes or fees.” This is a lie. If you can secure your own financing (personal bank, credit union, etc) before you buy, then that would be in your best interest and eliminate a lot of the shenanigans that can happen at the dealership. Additionally, when the sales managers offer is itemized with a down payment and payment listed, the payment- more times than not- can be retained without the requested money down. Down payments usually result in sheer profit for the dealership.

This little gem is another reason car dealers get a bad rap. When a sales manager submits your application to lenders for approval, the lenders will reply with what’s called a “call back.” The “call back” details the requirements for the loan. Example: let’s say the sales manager submits the numbers to a prime lender- we’ll use BB & T- for approval. BB & T will reply with terms (24/36/48/60/72 months), maximum amount financed, stip’s (proof of income, proof or residency, references, etc), and what’s called a “buy rate.” The “buy rate” is the interest rate the lender has approved for the loan- let’s use 7.9%. Well, here’s where the finance manager can steal from you. Typically, the lender will allow the dealership to make 2 points of rate if you’re still ok with the payment. That means the rate you’ve earned is 7.9%, but the dealer can contract you at 9.9% and the bank will pay the dealer the overage from the rate. This puts LOTS of cash in their pockets. Next time you buy a car and finance with one of the dealerships banks ask the finance manager to see the call back from the bank and compare that rate with the interest rate he’s trying to sign you up for. If he refuses, then he’s holding points of rate and he doesn’t want you to see that he’s trying to get you to pay a higher rate.

Contributor: Kay Jay

In the digital age, online casinos have become a popular entertainment source, offering players countless opportunities to try their luck. But beyond the thrill of the game, there’s another dimension to the online gambling world: the chance to make money using freebies given by these platforms. As online casinos compete for user attention, they generously offer various perks like welcome bonuses, free spins, and no-deposit rewards. While these might seem like mere tools to lure in new players, with the right strategy, they can be transformed into real cash. Let’s delve into how you can maximize these freebies to pocket some profits.

Utilizing Free Spins to Your Advantage

One of the most popular types of freebies provided by online casinos is free spins. These allow players to spin the slot machines a certain number of times without wagering their money. Let’s explore how you can make the most of free spins.

Using Free Spins for Practice

Free spins are an excellent way to get acquainted with a new game without risking your funds. By practicing with these spins, you can understand the rules, payouts, and special features of the slot machine. This knowledge can increase your chances of winning when you eventually play with real money.

Maximizing Winnings with Free Spins

Most free spins come with wagering requirements, meaning you’ll need to bet a certain amount before you can withdraw your winnings. It’s essential to read the terms and conditions to understand these requirements. However, if you choose games with high Return to Player (RTP) percentages and play strategically, you can maximize your winnings.

Leveraging Free Spins with Other Bonuses

Some casinos offer free spins in conjunction with other bonuses, like match deposit bonuses. By leveraging these combined offers, you can create a more substantial bankroll to play with, thereby increasing your chances of making profits.

No-Deposit Bonuses: A Risk-Free Way to Play

No-deposit bonuses allow you to play real-money games without making an initial deposit. Here’s how you can capitalize on these offers:

Understanding the Terms

No-deposit bonuses often come with strict terms and conditions, including wagering requirements and withdrawal limits. Understanding these rules will help you make informed decisions on how to play and when to cash out.

Choosing the Right Games 

When making the most of freebies, it’s crucial to select the right games that align with the offer’s conditions. Look for games that have a high RTP, are enjoyable to play, and contribute fully to the wagering requirements. By carefully choosing these games, you can make the path to profit much smoother.

Turning Welcome Bonuses into Profits

Welcome bonuses often match your first deposit with an additional amount of money. Here’s how to leverage them:

Meeting Wagering Requirements Strategically

Fulfilling wagering requirements is often a prerequisite for withdrawing your winnings from freebies. Developing a smart strategy that involves playing games that contribute the most to these requirements, combined with proper bankroll management, can be the key to successfully converting bonuses into cash.

Being Mindful of Time Limits

Time constraints often accompany online casino bonuses. Whether it’s a limited period to claim an offer or a set timeframe to meet the wagering requirements, being aware of these time limits is vital. Setting reminders and planning your gaming sessions accordingly can prevent unwanted surprises and help you take full advantage of the bonuses.

Stay Updated and Play Responsibly

Online casinos frequently update their promotions, seasonal offers, and loyalty programs. Being proactive in staying updated can allow you to grab the best deals as they arise. But as with all forms of gambling, remember to play responsibly. Set clear limits for yourself, don’t chase losses, and ensure you’re gambling for fun and entertainment, not as a primary source of income.

Moreover, the digital landscape of online casinos is ever-evolving, with technological advancements enhancing gaming experiences. It’s essential to stay informed about these changes to gain an edge or to simply enjoy the latest features. Equally crucial is maintaining a balanced approach. While it’s tempting to dive deep into the immersive world of online casinos, it’s vital to prioritize your well-being. Avoid letting the excitement overshadow your judgment, and always prioritize your mental and financial health. Dive into the digital realm with mindfulness and caution, celebrating victories and accepting losses with equal grace.

If you’re in the market for it, chances are it exists. And if you have one to sell, someone’s probably willing to buy it. That’s the reality of our free market. In an increasingly interconnected network of nearly eight billion people, “worth” has become a worthless word.

Nowadays, the strangest and most random items can go from worthless to worth millions overnight. All they need is the right buyer at the right time. The same works in reverse as some of the finest things become the biggest flops before you can blink.

This list includes ten of those items, seemingly worthless pieces of nonsensical junk that found the right person at the right moment and sold for absolutely insane amounts of money.

Related: 10 Con Artists Who Sold Things They Did Not Own

10 Audrey Hepburn’s Finger Oils

In 2017, the auction company Christie’s auctioned off some of the late Audrey Hepburn’s personal possessions. As expected, niche collectors and bored wealthy people turned up in droves, spending a total of around $5.3 million on the actress’s belongings. The most expensive of all the items sold? Hepburn’s shooting script for Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which went for more than $700,000.

The script for Breakfast at Tiffany’s, like most major motion picture scripts, is available online in its entirety. Anyone interested in its writing or production can download a copy of the full script (and as most of you are likely aware) for free at the right(/wrong) sites. That means that the $700,000 essentially just paid for the lingering sweat and sebum that Hepburn oozed onto the pages as she held them, like a vintage, upscale “gamer girl bathwater.”

9 Justin Bieber’s Hair

This sale is a bit tough to explain to the non-Beliebers. For some background: the Biebs first rose to fame alongside an equally famous haircut, his trademark feathery, swooping bangs. In 2011, the teen idol decided to shave his head, and a few million people, not just preteen girls but also journalists, lost their minds. Then Bieber appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and offered her a lock of his cut hair on the condition that she auctioned it off to charity.

Auction it, she did, and the small bundle of yellow fibers earned an absurd $40,668. Any amount given to charity is a commendable thing. But, given that the winning bidder almost certainly wasn’t already about to donate $40,668 and just happened to spot the hair at auction, it’s likely that the hair was the goal. It’s tough to imagine a more worthless item than a small cutting from Justin Bieber’s hair.

8 The Meaning of Life

Okay, we’ll be the first to say that $3.26 is not an insane amount of money. But when you divide that by the net worth of the item for sale—exactly $0.00—you end up with infinite value. That’s one heck of a windfall, and it’s exactly what eBay seller “postmil” received when they successfully auctioned off the meaning of life in 2000.

The entire product description read, “I have discovered the reason for our existence and will be happy to share this information with the highest bidder.” After mojo120843 won the bidding war with $3.26, they presumably got just that. To this day, postmil has a great feedback rating, so they must have delivered.

7 A Haunted Cane

In 2004, a six-year-old boy became convinced that the ghost of his recently-deceased grandfather was haunting him. He believed the ghost was attached to his grandfather’s old cane, which they still stored in their house. To ease his fears, the boy’s mother auctioned the cane off on eBay—ghost included. It sold for $64,000, which would be over $92,000 today.

The online casino GoldenPalace.com, which has a habit of buying rare and bizarre pieces of Americana, purchased the cane, its associated ghost, and a promise to contact the young boy to let him know that his grandfather “is there with you and you’re getting along great.”

6 Super Mario 64

First thing’s first: Super Mario 64 is not a worthless game. In many ways, it defined what it meant to be a 3D platformer, and to this day, it still appears in “best of” lists regularly. But the game, now more than 25 years old, is available almost everywhere, both officially through Nintendo remakes and unofficially through emulation services. This makes the $1,560,000 copy purchased earlier this year questionable.

The game cartridge was still in its box and graded at 9.8/A++ condition, which collectors will know to be the second-best condition possible. Undoubtedly, it was one of the holiest of holy grails imaginable for a video game collector. That is unless you start to consider what you’re actually buying: a plastic cartridge, a cardboard box, and a short instruction manual. We have to wonder what the exchange rate would be for $1,560,000 to gold coins and power stars.

5 Business.com

Just like Super Mario 64, we won’t claim that the domain name business.com is worthless. But when you compare its worth to its recent $350 million sale, it’s worth questioning whether or not the buyer is insane.

Telephone-directory company R.H. Donnelley purchased the domain name—again, for $350 million—beating out other bidders, including The New York Times and the Dow Jones. They have since converted the site into a basic business consultation page. While the site receives a steady amount of traffic and will undoubtedly help generate revenue if managed properly, it’s hard to imagine it paying off its $350 million investment anytime soon.

4 A Pink Rock

In 2017, a diamond known as the Pink Star was sold at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong. A company named Chow Tai Fook Enterprises bought the rock for $71.2 million.

It’s hard to say why a pink rock sold for that much money. After all, it’s not like it was sitting at the bottom of the Titanic for 100 years. Perhaps it’s the rock’s massive size, 59.6 carats cut (that’s only 11.92g or less than 0.5 ounces), that drew a buyer. Perhaps it’s the rock’s stunning color—a brownish, muddy pink.

Or maybe it’s…well, there really isn’t much to say about this tiny, plain rock that somehow sold for $71.2 million.

3 A Single Photograph

It is important that you Google “Rhein II” and look at the photo deeply. Really take it all in—every detail of every inch. It’s certainly a handsome photo with nice color and good framing, taken at the Rhine River near Dusseldorf, Germany.

Now ask yourself how much you would pay for a copy of the photo. No, not the original, just a copy. Chances are your answer came just a hair under its actual sale price—a whopping $4.3 million. The artist describes the photo as “a dramatic and profound reflection on human existence and our relationship to nature on the cusp of the 21st century.” Reporting on the hefty sale, the Guardian described the photo as a “sludgy image of [a] desolate, featureless landscape.”

Whichever description is more accurate, $4.3 million is a pretty high price tag for a duplicate, especially when you can probably find that same picture on a 99 cent postcard. 

2 A Sacred Grilled Cheese

In 1994, Florida resident Diane Duyser made herself a grilled cheese. Then, she says, “I went to take a bite out of it, and then I saw this lady looking back at me.” Duyser and her husband quickly determined that the lady on the grilled cheese was, in fact, the Virgin Mary.

The couple kept the sacred sandwich in their home for a decade. And during that time, it never spoiled or deteriorated at all. On top of that, it acted as a good luck charm for Duyser, even helping her to win $70,000 at her local casino.

All good things must end, however, and in 2004, Duyser auctioned off the chosen cheddar on eBay. The hallowed Havarti went for $28,000, bought by the very same Goldenpalace.com that purchased the haunted cane. Upon purchase, the company announced plans to take the blessed brie on tour and then re-auction it for charity. The current whereabouts of the revered ricotta are unknown.

1 A $70 Million Digital Copy of Beeple

NFT’s, or non-fungible tokens, are essentially copies of digital files like photos, videos, and music imbued with a digital certificate of authenticity. One such NFT, a copy of digital artist Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5000 Days, sold just this year for $69.3 million.

The sale makes Everydays: The First 5000 Days the most expensive NFT ever and one of the most expensive works by any living artist. If any piece had to be the most expensive, it makes sense that it would be Everydays; the piece is made from 5,000 smaller pieces of Beeple’s arranged chronologically. The content is not the strange part but rather the format—an NFT is just a digital copy. It’s a digital copy with a signature that says, “This identical copy is unlike any other identical copy,” but it’s still just a copy nonetheless.