Sold on EBay: The Town of Albert, Texas

EBay has for a long time been the people's favorite place to buy this and that, but now they have also sold a town on the popular internet marketing place, for a winning bid of 3.8 million dollars.

The town Albert in Texas is 13-acres, and lays about 60 miles north of San Antonio. Bobby Cave, a business owner and a singer/songwriter from Austin, who holds the title as the previous owner of the town, bought it in March of 2003, and has spent several hundred thousand on refurnishing it. Although he claims to like projects, he wants to move on.

"It's a concept", he says. "This town is unique; it's more like art then as a property."

Albert only has four inhabitants, but the town holds a pavilion, an 85-year old dance hall, and a bar. Cave's friend Eric Meissner came to Albert for work when Bobby Cave bought it, and opened the bar for business.

"I came to work in the bar, but I ended up being the town's janitor, gardener, and painter, yes anything you can think of." he says to CNN.

There is a sign in the road that indicates that you are driving into Alberta, but recently the post office had to close down. Meissner still thinks that Albert definitely is a town, despite its size.

In addition to the previous listed buildings, the owner of Alberta get an old school building in the outskirts of town dating back to 1900. According to Cave, Lyndon B. Johnson studied here in 1920.

Originally the town was owned by a man named Elmeier, and at this time it was called Martinsburg after an early settler. Elmeier sold the town to a man named Fritz Wilke in 1877, which opened up the Martinsburg post office. Later Elmeier was shot under a robbery in the 1880's.

Bobby Cave says not to be worried though; the town nowadays is very peaceful and quiet. Not so strange, when you think of the number of people living there.

Albert has its own web page, and on the main page it says:

"Welcome to historic Albert, Texas.

Located in the beautiful Wine Region of the Texas Hill Country, Albert is a place where music lovers, good friends, family and locals gather for cold beer and live Texas music.

So if you're itchin' to get out of the "big city" and long for a time when life was slow and easy... come out and see us.

We'll be here waitin' for ya."

The winner of the auction was an Italian, but before Bobby Cave signs over the deed for the land, he must make sure that the eBay bid is legitimate.

"There's just not any way to insist that a guy from Italy write me a check for three million," said Cave to Fox News. So even if the eBay winner does not follow up on the auction, Cave has five other potential buyers on hold.