We have a weakness for wind-up toys, and what’s the greatest about these is that they can be completely random and daft. Here’s some of the best ones we raked up from eBay.

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Ebay is a strange, strange place — it essentially hosts a bunch of stuff that people have and want to get rid of. Recently I’ve become quite fascinated with looking at its listings of space toys from before 1970. These are future-themed toys from the past, so it makes so much sense to actually see these in the present.

And yet I can’t imagine any actual kids from today actually playing with any of these toys. Maybe just overgrown adult-sized kids. Here are some of the toys: they are odd and funky all at once.

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If an object comes with a story behind it, does its objective value increase? Significant Projects, a work by journalist Rob Walker and author Josh Glenn, flirted with this idea by putting up curious thrifted items with elaborate made-up pasts for sale on eBay. The final bids of the objects ended up escalating way higher than their original asking price. Still, $81 for an ugly cup? $56 for a kitschy bobblehead? Really?

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Bessemer Venture Partnershas been Venture Capital investing since 1911. While they’ve had their successes (Skype), they’ve had their complete screw ups as well. Perhaps their worst pass? Google.

‘Cowan’s college friend rented her garage to Sergey and Larry for their first year. In 1999 and 2000 she tried to introduce Cowan to “these two really smart Stanford students writing a search engine’. Students? A new search engine? In the most important moment ever for Bessemer’s anti-portfolio, Cowan asked her, ‘How can I get out of this house without going anywhere near your garage?’

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Someone is selling the secret to Banksy’s identity on eBay. Just who is the subversive British street artist has been a topic of much debate. Now the truth is near: ‘If you win this auction, I will mail you a piece of paper revealing the true identity of Banksy’. It’s yours if you’ve got $US1 million or so to spare.

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