I think the auctions on eBay are becoming more of a joke and the sad thing is there's people just as ignorant that bid on the junk. There's already 9 bids for a piece of junk fridge. What next? :gl:
It's good publicity as most of the auctions they end up winning receive large amounts of media attention such as the $28,000 they paid for the Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese sandwich. That in turn gives them a huge amount of traffic from curious individuals who want to go to their site and see who they are. They won the auction for the right to name the newly discovered species of monkeys for $650,000 and that is also great publicity since that was on all of the media outlets and television shows.
I agree it's mostly all junk, but it is a great way to market their company as in the end the money they spend for the outrageous auctions turns into a large amount of profits from items they sell afterwards and the extra exposure. With the sandwich, they are now selling shirts, hats, etc... and the same goes for the monkey naming auction. They have a whole website up now dedicated to the monkey that sells products as well.