Man sell speeding ticket

New Zealand - It started as a speeding fine on a lonely Canterbury road, but by the end Bob Grieve was a Trade Me star, $51 richer and fielding amorous advances from complete strangers.

Grieve, a TV3 news cameraman in Christchurch, was peeved when a slightly heavy foot while driving back from Geraldine resulted in a policeman handing him a $130 fine.
So he did what anyone does these days – he put the ticket up for sale on online auction site Trade Me.

Ten days later, his auction had been viewed nearly 30,000 times, questions were being posted faster than he could answer them, and then his ticket was being sold to an insurance assessor from near Pukekohe who vowed to pay for the privilege of having someone else's speeding fine.

The successful bidder, Allan Hearn, said he decided to buy it because he was impressed by Grieve's spirit of enterprise.

"For fifty bucks, who cares? It's not like that handbag that Tana Umaga swung which sold for $20,000," he said.

"I thought it would be a bit of fun. I didn't really know how it would go, but I figured quite a few people would notice it," he said.

"I told my missus about it and she called me an idiot."

Hearn said he did not think he had ever had a speeding ticket before – a gap in his life that is now filled.

Grieve, whose user name is Bobthegreat, said he thought the bidding would peter out before reaching the $20 reserve.
"I was surprised when some guy put $50 on it," he said. "I was surprised by something else too."

It was the flurry of amorous comments once he posted photographs of himself holding his traffic ticket. Susan, a Lower Hutt woman, asked if "the holder comes with the ticket" and put her money where her mouse was by bidding four times early in the auction.

Other women across the country followed suit, with many alluding to Grieve's resemblance to Donny Osmond.

"Imagine finding true love during a Trade Me speeding ticket bidding war ... sounds like a movie!"