Crystal Palace - And the winner is...

"Buzz Erik Lightyear"
with a winning bid of 3,300,000 PEDs
(That's 330,000 USD for those unsure of the rate of the PED)

After the announcement that Crystal Palace would go up for sale, discussion in the community broke out instantly. "How much would it go for?", "I wonder what the taxrates will be set to. What do YOU think?" and "Who do YOU think will win it?" were heard everywhere.

Once the deed hit auction (Dec 14th, at 19:02:58 Calypso time), a 1 PED bid was swiftly made by "Sunab Kal Naverith". The bid was doubled the same minute by "pajjaz kamala azk", and went to 3 PEDs the next after a bid by "Seth Zozma Alexander".

"Minken minken Forsberg" then interfered and made a slightly more daring bid of 10,000 PEDs, followed by another bid for 11,000 PEDS, which he promptly outbid with 11,001, 11,002, and 11,111 PEDs respectively.

"pajjaz kamala azk", not to be outdone, raised with one more PED, which was outbid again by "Minken minken Forsberg" with a 20,000 PED bid. The next person to enter the bidding war was "Shogomad Shogi 1st", raising by 1 PED, only to have Minken overbid with 1 PED as well. Shogi raised by another, but was promptly overbid once more by Minken, who raised the price to 21,000 PEDs.

6 minutes later, "Qetesh Qetesh Qetesh" rasied the price to an even 500,000 PED. At that moment, the auction had been running for roughly 15 minutes. It remained at that price for over 3 and a half day, when "Ringo DRDoom Pow" raised it to 567,890 PED.

Argus in the heat of the moment - picture taken by Darkaner:

Fast forward to today (almost 10 days later) when "joe jeff xXSqUaLLXx" bid 570,000 PEDs, followed twenty minutes later by "Michael geats Platzgummer", who added 1 PED. "joe jeff xXSqUaLLXx" set him straight 5 minutes afterwards, and set the price to 600,001 PEDs.

"Eugenio Anhithe Wilde" followed with 600,002, but was outbid by "Qetesh Qetesh Qetesg" a few hours later with a bid of 1,000,003 PEDs, 4.5 hours before the ending of the auction.

More and more people started logging in at this time in the hope to witness what would be the exact moment when the world's new record was set for the most expensive virtual item of all times.

With 12 minutes to go, "Zachurm Deathifier Emegen" made his entry into the bidding, and set the bid to 1,010,000 PEDs. A bidding war erupted, with Qetesh raising to 1,111,111. Deathifier raised to 1,121,111, with Qetesh raising to 1,234,567 PEDs. Deathifier took the bid to 1,244,568 PEDs.

Like a true sniper, "Jenna Star Mercury" showed up pulling 1,300,000 PED out of his pocket, and reset the auction to last another 5 minutes. Deathifier rasied to 1,310,001, which Star raised to 1,400,000. A frantic bidwar broke loose between Deathifier, Qetesh and Star, which was interrupted briefly by a single surprise bid of 1,510,001 PEDs by "Eugenio Anhithe Wilde".

Further pushing and pulling mostly by Qetesh, Deathifier and Star saw the price pushed past 2,000,000 PEDs, more than doubling the previous record set by Club NEVERDIE, with Star and Deathifier continuing all the way up to 2,550,000. With less than 2 minutes left, Deathifier suddenly dropped out of the game, but just when everyone thought Star had won the auction, "Buzz Erik Lightyear" made a first bid of 2,700,000 PED.

The threesome of Deathifier, Star and Buzz kept up the bidwar, this time also pushing the auction past the 3 million PED mark.

The auction finally ended with the final bid of 3,300,000 PEDs made by "Buzz Erik Lightyear" at 23:01 Calypso time, thus finalizing an incredibly exciting auction.

The last five bidders:

[table="head"]Bidder|Final Amount|Time
"Buzz Erik Lightyear" | 3,300,000 | 23:01
"Zachurm Deathifier Emegen" | 3,210,001 | 23:01
"Jenna Star Mercury | 2,700,270 | 22:43
"Qetesh Qetesh Qetesh" | 2,260,002 | 22:09
"Eugenio Anhithe Wilde" | 1,510,001 | 21:51
[/table]


For those keeping track of such stuff, the total amount of the final bids made by the last 4 bidders adds up to well over 13,000,000 PEDs, which will ensure a nice financial closing for the books over at MindArk HQ. We could swear that we could hear the opening of the champagne bottles in Gothenburg all the way over here.

For those interested, over at Gamers Zone Radio, our very own Justin Thyme hope to be interviewing the winner soon.

Of course, a well-meant congratulations goes out from all of us to "Buzz Erik Lightyear", the new owner of Crystal Palance, and the new holder of the world record for"most expensive virtual item".

The second press release or announcement made it quite clear that CP would be sold "as is". Other than ensuring some nice drops to generate additional press, I'd not be keeping my hopes up for the above to happen if I were you.