Mystery auction

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A mystery auction is a type of online auction where bidders vie for boxes or envelopes containing various items, usually on the hope that the items will be humorous, interesting, or valuable. In the early days of eBay's popularity, sellers began promoting boxes or packages of random and usually low-value items not worth selling by themselves.

Today, sellers conducting mystery auctions have expanded the practice to form a kind of pseudo raffle or lottery, in which buyers bid on numbered envelopes, "virtual" items or other non-valuable goods, usually connected to random amounts of cash, vouchers, and/or items of value. Often sellers promote the auction with promises to return the winning bid price to bidder's PayPal account, along with any additional cash "gifts."

These auctions are carefully worded to avoid violation of eBay's Terms of Service (ToS) which expressly forbids "giveaways, random drawings, raffles, prizes or bonuses." Mystery auctions conform to the ToS, because anything included in a package or returned to the buyer in addition to the featured item is considered a "gift" rather than a prize.

Motivations for promoting mystery auctions range from the need to liquidate many items of little value quickly to simply creating a humorous diversion for frequent eBay bidders. Cash prize auctions are generally considered a means by which sellers can boost feedback ratings and transaction counts.

Dubious semantics aside, eBay recognizes the value of this type of auction and has set up a dedicated area for Mystery Auctions in the "Everything Else" category.