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Tuesday, April 16, 2002

Something to Chew On

The auction craze has hit a new low recently when a piece of gum chewed by Arizona Diamondback Luis Gonzalez went for the bid of $10,000.00. The winner of the Auction, or at least the guy who is getting stuck with the gum, is Curt Mueller of Mueller Sports Medicine. MSM manufactures “Quench”, a brand of chewing gum. The gum itself though is reported to be “Bazooka” manufactured by Topps, who was out bid during the auction. Both companies looked at the bidding as an advertising move.

The true winner here is Jason Gabbert, the man who put the gum up for auction. But not so fast; it seems Gabbert was arrested a while back for fraud because he was posing as Major League Player Aaron Sele and the gum itself came into question. Gabbert claims that a security guard handed him the gum at a spring training session. The guard though has signed a sworn affidavit saying that he never did this.

Not to worry though, to keep the auction pure, Luis Gonzalez has chewed another piece of gum and placed it into an empty water bottle; this will be sent on to the auction winner as well just so at least one of the pieces is authentic.

Oh my God people, it’s gum. It’s used freaking gum. This is not Mac’s 70th homerun ball, or Mantle’s glove or anything else of value… it’s gum. And it’s not even Mac’s or Mantle’s gum… it’s Luis Gonzalez. If someone bids $10,000.00 on a used piece of gum, I don’t think that good advertising… I think its freaking gross and I’m likely not to do business with them. I’ve never even heard of “Quench” gum and I’m sure not going to look for it now. There is an old saying that even bad publicity is good… not in this case.

This does though leave me with one question: does the chewing gum lose it’s flavor during an auction bidding fight?