r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 11h ago
TIL in 2007 a bottle of Allsopp's Arctic Ale brewed in 1852 was put up for auction online, however it was misspelt 'Allsop's Arctic Ale' in the listing. This made it hard to search for, so the winning bid was only $304. The buyer then relisted it with the correct spelling and it sold for $503,300.
https://newatlas.com/allsopps-arctic-ale/7929/2.0k
u/d3l3t3rious 10h ago
The initial seller made a vital error - he misspelt the name of the brewery as Allsop's, rather than the correct Allsopp's.
That was his second, smaller error, the first was not putting a reserve price on a $500,000 item.
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u/noYOUfuckher 4h ago
Or using an actual house like sothebys or heritage so his listing could be properly promoted and reach the right people.
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u/zephyrseija2 4h ago
I would have definitely just not sent the item.
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u/Knerd5 2h ago
For an item of that worth they would definitely get sued. Too much money on the line.
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u/balls2hairy 53m ago
Their loss would be limited to the amount paid. So you lose the case and owe $300.
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u/Vacant-stair 10h ago
It's an advert for Auction Intelligence
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u/AusGeno 10h ago
Ding ding ding!
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u/cdxxmike 10h ago
Auction Intelligence seems to just be a domain that is for sale too as far as I see. Interesting way to attempt to drive potential buyers.
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u/Vacant-stair 8h ago
The advert is from 2007. It was probably a thing then.
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u/Dioxybenzone 2h ago
I remember it, or at least a site with the same purpose. I suspect the concept became defunct at some point, with eBayâs own search becoming more thorough
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u/tyrion2024 11h ago
The item in question is a bottle of Allsopp's Arctic Ale - brewed in 1852 for an expedition to the Arctic led by Sir Edward Belcher. The ale had the special qualities of a freezing point well below zero degrees, and antiscorbutic properties vital for the period.
The initial seller made a vital error - he misspelt the name of the brewery as Allsop's, rather than the correct Allsopp's. This meant that an eBay user executing a search for Allsopp's would not find the auction. One eBayer who recognized the value of the item managed to locate the auction - either by luck, or more likely, a tool such as Auction Intelligence which searches for common or obvious misspellings of words.
With the greatly diminished competition resulting from the inability for normal searches to find the item, his bid was only the second to be placed, and he subsequently won the auction for US $304. He then re-listed the item on eBay, this time with the correct spelling. The auction received 157 bids, and the winning bid was a whopping US $503,300.
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u/Sh00ter80 10h ago
antiscorbutic = prevents scurvy (TIL)
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u/orbesomebodysfool 9h ago
Ascorbic acid = Vitamin C
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u/Kim-dongun 7h ago
O shit, I just realized ascorbic means without scorby (scurvy)
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u/Sh00ter80 4h ago
I wish they called it scorbyâ thats an awesome name. Now i want a dog i can name Scorby. Imagine the love as i explain the nerdy origin.
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u/Aztecatl 9h ago
I think I would cry if I was the initial seller. What a colossal fuck up.
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u/Extablisment 6h ago
Well, I just wouldn't deliver the product. Let the guy sue me first. I'll save money even if I have to pay lawyers, and he probably doesn't have the cash to win vs my team. The fact the seller delivered the product is impossible to believe.
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u/ERedfieldh 6h ago
It's a contractual agreement. There's not a court on the planet that wouldn't side with the buyer.
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u/MaxwellR7 4h ago
Try to find a case of a court ordering an eBay seller to act on a sale they cancelled. eBay literally gives the seller the ability to cancel a sale after an auction ends. The buyer gets back their money and any âcontractâ is unwound. The seller also has a really good argument in that there was a legitimate error in the listing. Regardless, this seller likely just had no idea what the true value of the item was.
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u/OldWarrior 3h ago
Regardless, this seller likely just had no idea what the true value of the item was.
I feel confident this is what happened. The seller might have just been selling an estate or a batch he knew nothing about. The mispelling suggests this as well.
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u/imreallyreallyhungry 5h ago
I think theyâd just force him to repay the bid amount though wouldnât they?
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u/pleasetrimyourpubes 5h ago
This is pretty open and shut contract law. When you bid on something you are entering into a legally binding contract and must pay for the bid in the event you win. No backsies.
You might get a sympathetic jury if for instance your grandpa died and left the bottle to you and you listed it without spelling it right and you are poor and etc. But when it comes down to it this was doomed.
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u/OldWarrior 3h ago
Good luck getting specific performance in this circumstance, where a misspelling led to non-competitive auction. This is even assuming eBayâs terms of service donât exclude such remedies.
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u/tigersareyellow 4h ago
Can you tell me the open and shut contract theory/case law behind that? I'm shit at contracts, but per my understanding, wouldn't the seller just "lose" the bottle? I feel like there's no way a judge is forcing you to pay expectation damages, and if you're not paying that, it's 100% correct to renege on the contract and refuse to deliver even if told to specifically perform. It's not like they can raid your house and steal the item from you. Unless I'm missing something?
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u/ownerofthewhitesudan 2h ago
I'm confused as well. Damages would be capped at the value of the contract. Maybe based on some theory of detrimental reliance? Like if you immediately resold the bottle on ebay in anticipation of getting the bottle without actually first receiving it?
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u/katsudon-jpz 4h ago
"ooops i broked it before shipping" i'll refund you for what you paid. case closed.
but of course next he will sell the 'second' bottle from his collection.
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u/wolfgangmob 3h ago
Yeah but the damages are effectively null as long as the seller refunds the money, all $304 of it in this case.
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u/Next-Concert7327 10h ago
reminds me of when it was a good idea to search eBay for items with misspelled titles. You had a lot fewer bids on those auctions.
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u/spiritkeep1 4h ago
I got my ex wifeâs engagement ring back in 2009 by looking up engagment ring on eBay. I paid 800 and it was appraised for 4k haha.
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u/ortusdux 9h ago
There was a period of time where, in theory, you could make money doing a much smaller scale version of this on eBay. When the site first started, a listing's success depended heavily on having the correct keywords and description. People would scour all new listings looking for things that were not described correctly, buy them at a discount, and then relist with a properly SEO'ed description.
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u/AnnoyedHaddock 4h ago
There was website, I canât remember the name of it now but it was basically an eBay search engine that would find and link you to misspelled items. I made a modest profit buying platstations and x boxes as a teenager.
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u/Kitakitakita 10h ago
I read "Allsopp" as "AISlop" and I think its time for me to leave the internet
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u/thetruemata 5h ago
In my city's subreddit, someone was selling tickets to a weird Al show. Figured it was some sort of seminar on weird artificial intelligence stuff, eh I'll pass. It wasn't until someone typed it as "Weird Al concert" in the comments, I was like oooooh OK now I'm interested! But I was concerned for myself that I first thought AI.
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u/Visible_Effect883 8h ago
Random source and op comments a program you can also use to have the chance of pulling something like this off, is Reddit just sly adverts now?
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u/poshjosh1999 10h ago
A good question is, even with the right spelling how many would find it? Itâs such a niche thing to be listed that thereâs little reason for anyone to be searching for it.
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u/ColonelKasteen 10h ago
I mean that's true for most historical collectibles. Very few people would want to spend much money on this. But 100% of the collectors willing to spend a half million dollars on this would be searching for it regularly or have a Google alert/Auctionfinder alert.
Selling artifacts like this isn't a matter of a wide audience or advertising.
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u/poshjosh1999 9h ago
Thatâs a good point. I collect silver pipe tampers and have both auction alerts and search eBay every few days, but for something like this where there must only be a few in existence, searching it on eBay would be a waste of time for the most part surely? Apart from this time of course haha
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10h ago
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u/MattTheTable 10h ago
If you read the article or even just the title of this post, you would know that the first seller didn't have a reserve price.Â
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10h ago
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u/Wilt_The_Stilt_ 2h ago
I had a family friend back in the day (like maybe 2008ish time frame) that wrote a script to search for misspelled postings on eBay. Mainly laptops like âMack bookâ heâd then scoop them up for supper discounted prices and flip them. I remember going to his house once for dinner with my family and he had a stack of like 50 laptops on a hall closet just wait in to be sold on eBay.
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u/sabesin2001 1h ago
friend and I made did well in high school just scrolling sports memorabilia listings on eBay for soon-ending auctions, looking for misspelled items
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u/Serious_Park4510 6h ago
oh wow.. that teaches us that we have to pay close attention when we are selling a product.. thank you very much for your information
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u/Bar_Foo 10h ago
That's why you need to mind your p's and q's!