Vinny Magalhaes has closed the eBay auction of his M-1 championship belt, announcing that it has been sold for $100,000.
The auction went live yesterday and started at under one dollar with an offer of free shipping. It quickly exceeded even Magalhaes’ wildest expectations, topping $20,000 in a few hours.
Bids continued to roll in throughout the day and by the end of Monday the price was up to $90,100, with over 100 people having bid on the belt.
Concerns were raised that the numbers may have been bumped up by fake bids, either from trolls or from friends of the M-1 organisation.
But inspection of some of the big-number bidders’ accounts showed that there were definitely some legitimate entities in there.
Among them was a sports memorabilia dealer, who was the first bidder to take the auction over the $90,000 mark.
Shortly afterwards the auction was closed, and it is thought that an arrangement may have been reached with this particular dealer.
On the other hand, Magalhaes could well be engaged in a massive trolling of the M-1 organisation. To say he is not fond of M-1 is an understatement - he and M-1 exec Evgeni Kogan have exchanged numerous insults via Twitter and Magalhaes has stated that he is specifically sidelining himself for the near future to invalidate a 'match clause' that M-1 has in his recently-expired contract with the organisation.
Odds of someone paying $100,000 for an M-1 belt? Very low.
VINNY MAGALHAES CLAIMS M-1 BELT SOLD FOR $100,000