The Worst (and Best) Thing I Ever Bought on Ebay

I have bought lots of things on Ebay over the years.  Most of the items have been exactly as advertised and I have come by some fantastic deals and items that I would not have been able to get anywhere else.

However, there is one item that was far from this standard, but was so incredibly bad that it has to be one of the funniest items I've ever seen.

Now, this isn't like those XBox boxes that people spend $300 to buy and then realized they literally bought the box that the XBox came in.  It's not that bad, and I really can't say that it was entirely fraudulent, although it was certainly not the most forthcoming seller ever.

I wanted to purchase for my wife the entire West Wing collection on DVD.  When we first started dating, the West Wing was a weekly date night for us.  We would usually have dinner and then return to her house and watch the West Wing together (with lots of kissing during commercials for good measure).  For Christmas that first year, we each bought each other the first season of the show on DVD.  Of course, if you have ever looked at the price for the entire series, it is quite expensive.  So, I perused the wonderful world of eBay in order to find a deal.  Most of the items were listed at or near the retail price for the series collection.  However, there was one collection that was very reasonable.  There were some things that raised some questions in my mind -- not the least of which being the Chinese lettering above the title.  The seller assured me that the unopened package was (or at least appeared to be) what it purported to be.  So I placed a bid.

At first, the bids remained very low.  It looked as if I was going to get this import (counterfeit) for a steal.  However, at the last minute, the bidding went a little crazy.  I hesitated before raising my bid limit, but I really wanted to get this for my wife and it was still cheaper than I could get it anywhere else, although it was becoming far from a steal.  I ended up paying $75 for the collection -- still not terribly bad for 7 seasons of a television show.  Well, that is if it proved to be what it was advertised to be.

The large box arrived in time for my wife's birthday.  I was very excited about it and wrapped it up nicely for her.  When she opened it, she was very happy with my purchase at first, but then had a confused look on her face -- why were there Chinese characters on the front of the collection?  Were these even in English?

As we opened the box it got worse -- There were seemingly hundreds of DVD's none of which were labeled.  They did have the West Wing labels from each season on the DVD's, but no indication as to which disc was from which season and in what order the discs were.  We decided to put in the first disc and see what it did.  It did have the first episodes from the first season, however, there were English subtitles.  No problem, we just went to the disc menu and took off the subtitles.  No dice.  Subtitles remained.

OK, so there is a problem.  Can't get the subtitles off.  But the episodes were there.  The language selections were also interesting.  We had the following subtitle choices: English (check); Portuguese (interesting choice); Chinese (I think); and what I can only guess is Korean (?).  Unfortunately, the audio was only in English, because it would have been great to hear them speaking in Korean, well, at least I would have thought this was interesting.

As my wife became less and less impressed with my bargain online shopping, I decided to do my best to make the most of the situation and label the discs.  This involved a painstaking process of bringing up each individual menu on each individual disc and then labeling which episodes were on which disc.  However, everything worked.  Well, except for the last season.  That was in the wrong format for U.S. televisions.  But, we can watch it all we want in Europe.

It wasn't until later that we discovered the best part of my purchase.  This was included on the back of the very large velvet lined box in which the discs came.  In the great tradition of Chinese counterfeiters, the makers of this particular collection cut and pasted things from various sources in order to describe the contents of the package.  This sometimes leads to interesting spellings and grammar such as a knock-off of the upside down tomato grower I found at a flea market which had apparently been spelled phonetically by the counterfeiter as it listed the product as the "Topsy Tourey".  It also leads to some great product descriptions such as "Super Fantastic Fire Making Device for Crazy Lucky American Capitalist Smoking Cowboy Man" for a cigarette lighter.

On this collection this is how this manifested (this is funnier if you say it aloud in a fake Chinese accent) (formatting and grammar mistakes from the original):

"Special Features: Lauren Bacall Hosts You Must Remember This: A Tribute to Casablanca;A spellbinding Backstage Tour  Bacall on Bogart Features the Award -Bunny and the Looney Tunes Gang Premiere  Episode Who Holds Tomorrow?From the 1955 TV Series Adaptation of Casablanca Screed Guild Players Radio Production of Casabl anca Feature The Film's 3 Top-Billed Stars Scoring Session Outtakes Gallery  Production History Gallery Includes Photos,Press Materials,Studio Correspondence,Memorabilia And More."

But, if you thought that was all, wait...we've got more!  Apparently in other countries the television series "The West Wing" was actually an action film.  I had no idea of this, but just check out the following from my exclusive one of a kind collection:

FRANCHISE PICTURES PRESENTES A RENNY HARLIN FILM: SYLVESTER STALLONE "THE WEST WING" BURT REYNOLDS, KIP PARDUE, TIL SCIWEIGER, GINA GERSHON, ESTELLA WARREN, CRISTIAN DE LA FUENTE, MUSIC BY BT LINE PRODUCER MARY MCLEOD, CO-EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS REBECCA SPIKINGS, TRACEE STANLEY, EDITED BY STUART LEVY AND STEVE GILSON, PRODUCTION DESIGNER CHARLES WOOD, DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY MAURO FIORE, EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS ANDREW STEVENS, DON CARMODY, KEVIN KING, PRODUCED BY ELIE SAMAHA, SYLVESTER STALLONE, RENNY HARLIN, STORY BY JAN SKRENTNY AND NEAL TAVACHNICK, SCREENPLAY BY SYLVESTER STALLONE, DIRECTED BY RENNY HARLIN.

Oh, and apparently it is rated PG-13 (PG in Canada)

I don't know about you, but I had no idea that Sylvester Stallone played such a prominent role in the West Wing.  I think that Aaron Sorkin has some explaining to do.

Anyway, most of the discs play just fine.  One day we'll make the investment in the non-felonious version of the series collection.

By the way, e-mails to the seller went unreturned.  A negative review was left, and I never bought any other DVD's on eBay.  It did make for a good laugh though.