ARLINGTON – As their 10-day eBay auction for a $5 Qwest Field Super Dog wound down past the two-minute warning at 6:29 p.m. Thursday, the Arlington trio that came up with the idea started to sweat it.
Would the top bid of $1,525 hold up?
“My heart’s beating. I don’t know why,” said Stacey Houtary, 27.
The joking in the kitchen stopped as Houtary, Josh Minnick, 27; Matt Allison, 25; and a few companions looked over her shoulder at a laptop computer. The three friends bought the hot dog at the Seattle Seahawks championship game that sent them to the Super Bowl.
They were nervous because they didn’t know how serious the bids were. After topping out at more than $10,000, bidders the past few days had been backing out faster than a Depression-era bank panic.
One minute, six seconds to go.
“Come on, Golden Palace, where are you?” Minnick said.
The Golden Palace online casino had asked to be put on the approved bidder’s list. But as the last minute ticked away, no new bids came in.
With just four seconds to go, the bid changed.
“Oh, Golden Palace just bid!” Houtary yelled. “Eighteen hundred! Woo!”
Amid high fives and the din of ringing cell phones, Minnick popped a bottle of champagne. He poured everybody a cup and raised a toast.
“Here’s to eighteen hundred bucks for a five-dollar wienie!” Minnick said with a booming laugh.
A few minutes later, Jeff Kay, a spokesman for Golden Palace.com, called.
“I can’t wait to get your hot dog. We’re a little hungry,” Kay joked.
Actually, the online casino, which is based on the island of Antigua and licensed in Kahnawake, Quebec, plans to include the hot dog in a traveling museum of bizarre items it has won on eBay auctions, Kay said.
Golden Palace’s list of acquisitions includes:
* A grilled cheese sandwich with the image of the Virgin Mary, $28,000.
* A kidney stone from Capt. James T. Kirk, aka William Shatner, $25,000.
* Ariel Sharon’s battle-stained bandage, $10,000.
* Pope Benedict’s old Volkswagen, $244,590.
Kay told Houtary the company would send a representative to pick up the hot dog in Seattle today.
The saga started as a lark the day before the Seahawks beat the Carolina Panthers in the National Football Conference championship game Jan. 22. Inspired by a person who they heard had sold a can of air from a previous playoff game for several hundred dollars, the trio decided to test the power of the Seahawks – with a hot dog.
“Our first goal was to beat the can of air,” Minnick said.
Then things got crazy.
News of the hot dog auction quickly circulated. E-mails poured in from Washington, D.C., Australia and points between.
As bids shot up the first week, they told their story to newspapers, radio and television stations from all over. Thursday night, they recounted some of the nuttier moments.
“You’ve gotten how many marriage proposals?” Minnick asked Houtary.
“Two,” she said.
“What?!” said Allison, her boyfriend.
“Two marriage proposals and one lady saying she had a son who was available,” Houtary said.
“One guy called me the anti-Christ,” Minnick said.
In 10 days, their eBay site got more than 350,000 hits.
And these last 10 days have been tremendous fun, something they’ll always remember, the group said.
Doing some quick calculations, they set aside 15 percent, or $270, for the Grant Wistrom Foundation for kids with cancer and their families. Each of them would then split $510.
“That’s not a bad take on $5,” Houtary said.
“What a kick in the pants!” Minnick said.
Reporter Scott Morris: 425-339-3292 or smorris@heraldnet.com.
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