An online auction to raise funds for Japan’s disaster relief operations restarted yesterday after an unusual spike in bidding forced the organizer to cancel the auction a day earlier.
Autographed soccer shoes and two jerseys donated by former Japanese soccer player Hidetoshi Nakata in a fundraising telethon went up for grabs on Yahoo Taiwan’s auction platform at 3pm.
In light of abnormal bidding on Tuesday, which pushed the bids to more than NT$900 million (US$30.4 million), the bidders were required to e-mail their personal information to the Chinese Television System (CTS), the organizer of the auction.
The unusual bids came after TV producer Wang Wei-chung (王偉忠) offered during a fundraising telethon on Friday last week to pay NT$300,000 for the sports star’s memorabilia, which would have pre-empted the online auction. The offer stirred up controversy among netizens, who accused Wang of “robbing” the public of the chance to bid on the items and possibly pushing the price higher than Wang’s offer.
The exorbitant bid was seen as an attempt by the complainers to prove their point that the auction could bring in far more money than Wang’s offer.
“We believe that the bids were likely to have been made by mischief-makers, especially when considering the previous amounts Nakata’s donations had raised,” a CTS public relations officer said.
Nakata raised almost US$1.5 million for Haitian disaster relief last year by auctioning off a pair of soccer shoes.
Three hours after the second auction began, the highest bid for the items had reached NT$1,001,499, up from the starting price of NT$300,000.
The proceeds of the auction, which includes other items donated by Japanese celebrities, will go to the Red Cross Society of the Republic of China for Japan’s earthquake and tsunami relief efforts.
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