Wednesday, August 20, 2003

By Adrian McCoy, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The city's financial problems need a dramatic and creative solution. For about half an hour Monday, the WBZZ-FM (93.7) morning team thought they had it.

They put the city up for auction on eBay.com.

During the show, they used a listener's account with the online auction company to list Pittsburgh for sale to the highest bidder. The bidding started at $1, and the highest offer received was more than $60,000, according to morning team member Bubba. The bidding period was to last for five days. "Our goal was $50 million," he said.

However, the city vanished from eBay after 26 minutes. Check the site now, and while there are tons of Pittsburgh-related memorabilia, assorted bobbleheads and a Kordell Stewart poster, you can't buy the whole city.

An eBay spokesman, Kevin Pursglove, said that when the company determines that a sale item isn't legitimate, it's pulled. In this case, they quickly realized it was a prank. "We like to think we have a good sense of humor and encourage our users to have fun. We also frown upon pranks."

The eBay site sells real estate, including some very big deals, but nothing like this, Pursglove said. "We've never had a major industrial city."

A small company town in Northern California was put up for sale once, but eBay didn't have any details on the deal, since the closing wasn't handled through it.

The WBZZ morning team of Dave, Bubba, Shelley, Brian and Aimee had listeners call in with suggestions of selling points to include in the online ad they posted, and got everything from the Pirates and Steelers to Coneman and Mineo's Pizza.

Bubba said they never really expected to unload the city, but that the response from callers was uplifting. "It gave us something to rally around."

The station hasn't heard from anyone in city government, he said.

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