Celebrities for Sale

If you jump on eBay right now, you are bound to find at least one item that was originally owned by one of many current celebrities. This is a recurring trend these days. Celebrities are selling just about anything you can imagine for charity and things they would never sell, such as hair, are being sold for them by others.

While selling items belonging to celebrities is nothing new, some of the items being sold are. Teeth, hair and assorted other bodily bits can now be found floating around on the internet. While only a DNA test would prove if these things are actually from the famous person claimed, they still sell!

A good example of unauthorized sales came to light in 2005, when a water bottle that Kelly Clarkson had apparently drunk out of went on sale on eBay. It eventually sold for just over $20. A more recent development was a handful of letters from Jennifer Aniston that an ex-boyfriend wanted to sell. He was talked out of it by her reps, however.

Celebrities aren't above selling their belongings either, although many do it for a good cause. For example, the Shirt off My Back campaign to raise money for various children's charities has been attended by a great number of celebrities who donated their own clothing and accessories for sale. Participants in this program include Sean Hayes, Martin Sheen, Gary Sinise, Ryan Seacrest, Nicole Richie and Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Another charity was funded by Elton John. He sold over 10,000 items of clothing from his closet in 2006 and donated the money to the Elton John AIDS Fund. There were so many items to be sold that they actually had to open a temporary store just to house them all! Not everything was Elton John's; some of the clothing belonged to his partner as well.

In 2004, Billy Joel crashed his car into a house after losing control on a wet road. A radio station employee picked up several pieces of the crashed car and the broken grill was later sold by the radio station, with the money being donated to a local charity.

Perhaps one of the strangest items from celebrities to be sold for charity was a kidney stone passed by William Shatner. It sold for $25,000 dollars and the money was donated to Habitat for Humanity. One has to wonder who would have bought such a thing, but at least it benefited a lot of homeless families!

While most stars stick to donating their used items for sale for charity, there are a few who are not above personal gain. Remember The Bachelor season two? Well, the couple, Aaron Buerge and his fiancée Helene Eksterowicz decided not to tie the knot and sold their engagement ring on eBay as well and split the profits.

All in all, celebrities have a lot of opportunities to earn money. Whether they do good with it or not is up to them, but for the rest of us, it is a lot of fun to watch!