10 Crazy Things eBay Won’t Let You Sell

When you need to de-stash your stuff and make some money in the process, eBay is always one of the top places to go if you CBF having a garage sale.

The online auction and shopping website has come a long way since it started in 1995 in some dude’s living room in California to sell off some of his stuff, including a broken laser pointer. Now, when you are looking to buy just about anything, from a car, to a cake topper for your kid’s birthday party, chances are, you’ll check eBay to see what you’re looking for.

But there are some things that you can’t buy and sell on there, for various reasons, because doing so will violate eBay policies.  Some of these make sense, others are a teensy bit baffling. And then there are the things that make you say “WTF? Who would want to buy that anyway?!”

1.  Magic potions, curses and spells

If you’re in the market to find an incantation to rid your home of demons, don’t even bother with eBay. Similarly, if you’re wanting to put a curse on your ex and that beyotch he took off with, you’ll have to find another marketplace. The sale of “curses, spells, hexes, magic prayers, blessing services, magic potions, healing sessions” and other metaphysical items is banned on eBay, probably because of people filing PayPal disputes when they don’t work and the difficulty to prove that the item isn’t as described.

2. Human remains and body parts

If you have any unwanted human bodies or body parts hanging around the house, you can’t list them for sale on eBay, soz. This includes things like selling organs, bones, blood, bodily fluids, sperm and eggs. There are two exceptions however – one is items that contain ‘human scalp hair’, such as wigs, and the other is clean, articulated non-Native American skulls and skeletons that are intended for medical education.

3. Souvenirs from the holocaust

A few years back, there was a controversy sparked by a man using eBay to sell a uniform that had belonged to a World War II Nazi concentration camp prisoner, which revealed there were other holocaust souvenirs on the site. The company pulled all the listings and these items, alongside a swag of other Nazi artifacts and propaganda are not permitted to be sold on the site.

4. Pre-used coffins, burial plots and gravestones

You CAN buy and sell these things so long as they’ve never been used before — which is bad news for anyone in the second hand burial plot trade.

5. Used underwear

Legend has it that back in the early days of eBay, the site was awash (okay, probably not the best word) with people buying worn, unwashed, dirty ladies underwear because that’s what floated their boats, and there were lots of people willing to keep them in a supply of freshly soiled smalls. At some point, the site had enough of the shenanigans of the underwear fetishists and cracked down, and these days, it is against eBay policy to sell any used “athletic supporters, briefs, boxer shorts, children-sized underwear, g-strings, jock straps, thongs, panties or any other used clothing item with content we find to be inappropriate”.

6. Sexual services

If you’re looking for some action, eBay is probably one of the last places you’d think to look. But because of someone, there’s a rule that you can’t sell “offers for personal relationships, including in-person or online relationships” as well as “any listing that in any way offers or suggests sexual contact, including dating and escort services”, which means all those people who occasionally make the news for selling their virginity on eBay are probably in violation of the site’s T&Cs. Tsk tsk.

7. Nuclear weapons

If you want to buy an atomic or nuclear weapon, you’re fresh out of luck as eBay specifically forbids the selling of these items on its site. Its policy also forbids the sale of explosives, grenades of any kind, land mines, missiles, rockers or launchers and nerve gas.

8.  Your soul

Every now and then, you’ll hear of someone trying to sell their own soul on eBay to make a quick buck. Unfortunately, eBay usually cracks down on these sellers and has done so for a very long time. Back in 2000, it gave the following reason for forbidding the sale of human souls: “eBay does not allow the auctioning of human souls for the following reasons: If the soul does not exist, eBay could not allow the auctioning of the soul because there would be nothing to sell. However, if the soul does exist then, in accordance with eBay’s policy on human parts and remains, we would not allow the auctioning of human souls.”

9. Used sex toys

If you’re decluttering the top drawer and realise you have too many dildos that you don’t use anymore, you can’t sell them on eBay. Oh and nudie mags with sticky pages? Yuck, please keep it to yourself.

10.  Pacemakers and defibrillators

If you’re planning on becoming an amateur heart surgeon and working out of your garage, you won’t be able to get some of the tools of the trade from eBay, I’m afraid. These items are listed as prohibited alongside other “medical devices” such as prescription eye glasses and contact lenses.

What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever bought off of eBay?