MELBOURNE, Australia — A father of five who listed a rare Woolworths collectible on eBay for what he hoped might fetch a few hundred dollars found himself at the center of an absurd bidding war that briefly touched $100 million, only to watch the entire sale evaporate once the winning bid was exposed as a joke.

Melbourne dad Mark Hunter, 51, listed his family’s Flocked Bullseye Ooshie, one of just 125 in circulation across Australia, on eBay after his children discovered the tiny figurine, modeled on Woody’s loyal horse from “Toy Story,” was among the rarest items in Woolworths’ latest Disney Ooshies promotion. Hunter told Yahoo Lifestyle that the family’s original plan was modest: sell the toy for a couple hundred dollars and put the money toward a new puppy.

A Bidding War That Spiraled Out of Control

What followed instead was a chaotic escalation. The auction-style listing opened at a modest $100, and by the time Yahoo Lifestyle first reported on the frenzy, 93 bidders had already driven the price to $16,111. Hunter said he initially found the early surge exciting, thinking it might represent a genuine payday for his family, but his optimism curdled as the numbers kept climbing.

“At the point when it reached over $10,000 I was like, ‘This is something’s wrong with this,’” Hunter said. By the time the listing crossed $15,000, he said, he knew the bidding had tipped into farce. When the auction closed, the final price had rocketed past $100 million, with more than 25 people having participated in driving the listing to its absurd conclusion.

A Windfall That Never Was

The apparent winning bidder immediately filed a cancellation request once the auction ended, leaving Hunter with no sale and no payment. Hunter said he accepted the cancellation without a fight, reasoning there was little point pursuing a bid eBay would never be able to collect in the first place, given how obviously illegitimate it was.

Adding insult to injury, eBay’s system treated the canceled sale as a completed transaction for the purposes of Hunter’s account limits, using up his monthly selling allowance and blocking him from relisting the rare Ooshie for 28 days. The original listing disappeared entirely, taking the eye-popping headline price with it and leaving Hunter unable to sell the toy through the platform for nearly a month.

The Joker Comes Clean

Not long after the auction closed, the person responsible for the winning bid reached out to Hunter directly to explain what had happened. “I apologise for the inconvenience of the troll bid,” the message read, according to Hunter. “I showed my workmates, and he jokingly placed the maximum bid prior to my knowledge.”

Despite the setback, Hunter said the story may still end well. A genuine collector reached out to him on Facebook expressing interest in buying the Ooshie directly. “I’ll just see what the collector’s looking to paying, and if we’re happy with that, we’ll just agree. It’ll hopefully bring the collector some happiness, which would be a good ending,” Hunter said.

eBay Defends Its Hands-Off Approach

When Yahoo Lifestyle asked eBay whether the listing would be removed or whether the runaway bidding would be allowed to continue once it became clear the numbers were spiraling into the absurd, an eBay spokesperson defended the platform’s policy of not intervening in live auctions. “We don’t restrict bids on auction items,” the spokesperson said. “If a bidder wants to receive an item, however, they will need to pay the amount that they have bid for it. We have clear policies in place that restrict fake or shill bidding and consistently making bids that are not paid will see us take action on a user’s account.”

The spokesperson added that if a winning bidder ultimately refuses to pay, as happened in Hunter’s case, the seller retains the option of offering the item to one of the auction’s other participants instead, noting that Hunter’s listing had attracted 183 underbidders who could theoretically still be approached about purchasing the toy.

A Broader Collecting Frenzy

Hunter’s Ooshie was not the only rare figurine to attract inflated bids during Woolworths’ current promotion. A separate listing for a Platinum Buzz Lightyear Ooshie was posted with an asking price of $1,050.70, reflecting genuine, if still elevated, collector demand for the promotion’s scarcer items.

Consumer behavior expert Dr. Paul Harrison, a senior lecturer at Deakin University, told Yahoo Lifestyle that shoppers shouldn’t assume a rare Ooshie is automatically worth a significant sum, explaining that collectibles only carry real value when buyers genuinely agree they are worth paying for. He noted that limited-edition items can become especially desirable specifically because many collectors are driven by a psychological need to complete a full set, saying that when people have invested time collecting a set, the single missing piece can become incredibly valuable to them personally, even if that value doesn’t translate to a broader market price.

A Marketing Phenomenon a Decade in the Making

This year’s Ooshies promotion marks a decade since the collectible figurines first appeared in Australian shopping trolleys, and nostalgia appears to be fueling much of the current enthusiasm. For collectors unwilling to spend serious money chasing rare pieces, Woolworths has leaned into the community aspect of the promotion, with the company confirming it will host free trading events in every supermarket and Big W store between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. Saturday, giving shoppers a chance to swap duplicate Ooshies and fill out their collections without turning to online marketplaces.

With his eBay listing wiped out and his selling privileges suspended for 28 days, Hunter said he now plans to pursue a private sale directly with the collector who reached out to him on Facebook, sidestepping the platform entirely rather than risk another round of runaway, illegitimate bidding. For now, the episode stands as a cautionary tale for other Australians who may find themselves holding a rare Ooshie and dreaming of a windfall, a reminder that even a listing headed toward a record-breaking price can collapse entirely if the winning bid was never real to begin with.