| 'Idiot' bidder buys speeding ticket at auction
WELLINGTON.- In a strange example of internet madness, a New Zealander has sold a $NZ130 ($A116) speeding ticket on a local online auction website. Nearly 30,000 people viewed Bob Grieve's ticket on the Trade Me site before Allan Hearn, an insurance assessor from Pukekohe, - by chance the V8 motor racing capital of New Zealand - bought it for $NZ51 ($A45.60). Hearn said he had never had a speeding ticket - a gap in his life that is now filled, The Press of Christchurch reported. "For 50 bucks, who cares?" he said. "I told my missus about it, and she called me an idiot." Grieve, a TV cameraman from Christchurch, posted his photograph holding the ticket on the site and said he had fielded a flurry of amorous comments as well as bids.
Frisky Lamb puts Gloucester top
Besides bidding farewell to the stand, the Kingsholm faithful said their farewells to Jake Boer, Peter Richards and Adam Eustace. Boer, Gloucester’s South African flanker, is returning home at the end of the season to pursue outside business interests, while Richards will join London Irish next season and Eustace has signed for Llanelli Scarlets. Richards has been off the booze in a bid to boost his England prospects, and could be the only one of the trio not nursing a hangover this morning. Newcastle’s headaches began yesterday morning, when they woke at their Gloucester hotel to find that the kitbag containing all 30 pairs of the team’s shorts had been stolen. It hardly ranked alongside Pickles the dog sniffing out the Jules Rimet trophy in 1966, but the Falcons were still grateful to the local schoolboy who discovered them in his back garden — and his dad who drove them to the ground in time to spare the players’ blushes.
Flood-damaged cars a problem for shoppers
Nobody knows how many cars were damaged this week by floodwaters that rose high enough to soak engines, wiring, computers and transmissions. But consumer advocates say it's a good bet that some of those cars will be for sale, meaning car shoppers need to be on the lookout for signs that the vehicle they're thinking of buying was under water. It's not an easy task, said Terry Grosselfinger, the director of consumer protection in Rockland County. That's because although flood-damaged cars often "dry out" and get back on the road, they usually sustain some long-term damage. "It's not just a problem for a week," he said. "These cars will come on the market for the next six months or a year," he said. And the sellers often replace carpeting, paint and mechanical parts that showed clear signs of water damage, he said.
King Corn puts used equipment in hotter demand
Bob Rottier had little idea what bids to expect for the assortment of equipment at his first big farm auction of the year last weekend in Grant. But he was pretty certain a 1950s-era John Deere 290 two-row corn planter would not bring much. So the co-owner of Fremont-based Auction Connection Inc. was surprised when a man planning to grow corn on the east side of Michigan bought the planter for $550. "Five years ago, you couldn't get $100 out of them," Rottier said. Times have changed in farming, with $4 per bushel corn prices fueling optimism and pushing corn acreage nationwide up 15 percent from 2006. A U.S. Department of Agriculture study forecasts farmers will plant more than 90 million acres of corn this year, the most since 1944.
SIMPSON BOOK RIGHTS AUCTION DELAYED
LATEST: An auction to sell off the rights to O.J. SIMPSON's scrapped book IF I DID IT has been delayed. The rights to controversial book - which hypothetically places Simpson at the scene of the 1994 murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman - were due to be sold at an auction tomorrow (17Apr07). But it was postponed after Lorraine Brooke Associates, the company that struck the deal for the ex-NFL star, filed for bankruptcy last week (13Apr07). The news comes as a blow to the Goldman family who were due to receive the proceeds as part of the $33.5 million (£17 million) Simpson owes following a 1997 civil case for wrongful death. Goldman family attorney David Cook says, "The bankruptcy process is a detour on the road to justice." .
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