An Oasis mega fan may get a supersonic payout after a few blades of grass he collected from a Liam Gallagher gig reached more than £60,000 on eBay. David Watson, 35, said he originally put the listing up as a “joke” while “hungover” after going to the former Oasis frontman’s show at Knebworth, Hertfordshire, on Saturday.
But three days later, the innocuous item - with a £5 starting price - had gained more than 100 bids and reached an eye-watering figure in the tens of thousands of pounds. The graphic designer quipped he plans to buy a “bouncy castle business” as it's the "only way to make money with inflation" if he receives the money for the sample, which he collected close to the concert’s main stage.
But he’s not “confident” the final winner will shell out for the grass – and said he would instead settle for a shout from his hero, Liam.
He said: “I jokingly said I’m going to pick some grass and put it on eBay, and when we were watching one of the acts, I grabbed some and put it in my shorts. When I got back, I whacked it on for a fiver, and now it’s accrued tens of thousands.
"There’s a bloke selling his bouncy castle business for £20,000, and I told my girlfriend if I get paid, I’ll buy that as it’s the only way to make money with inflation at the moment. But I don’t think they’re going to pay out to be honest.
"I think it might be people having a wind-up and I don’t want to be confident. If Liam gave me a shout out, that would obviously be great though.”
David, from Stourbridge, West Midlands, was inspired to list the item after a festivalgoer's “bottle of air” from a gig reached tens of thousands of pounds on eBay.
He said: “I had the idea on the drive down there. Years ago, someone sold some air from a Stone Roses gig and I think that went for about £65,000 on eBay. So I jokingly said I’m going to pick some grass and stick it up on Sunday."
David, who has seen Oasis more than ten times and has gone to Belgium to watch Liam Gallagher play, went to the concert, which he described as “amazing”, with his girlfriend. And when he got home, on Sunday he decided to stick the grass on the online auction site for a laugh as he had promised.
He said: “We were both quite hungover, and I said 'I’m going to whack this on eBay' as a joke. I used the see-through bag that I took my liquids on a plane to Spain with a few weeks ago and I took a photo and stuck it on eBay and that was it.”
On Sunday, after his post was shared by the Oasis Mania Fanpage on Twitter, David said he was shocked to find his grass at the centre of a bidding war.
He said: “It went to about £50, and I text my girlfriend and said, 'You’ll never believe this'. And then about an hour later it was at £5,000. I thought, 'This is a joke'."
Over the next two days, David’s phone didn’t stop buzzing as fans piled in to raise the price of the listing even further.
Speaking on Tuesday, he said: “My phone hasn’t stopped all day. I’ve been struggling to work through it. It keeps flashing up. God knows what it will reach, but it would be nice to beat the Stone Roses air, which was around £65,000.”
Starry-eyed David said he began reading up on eBay’s terms and conditions concerning buyers' obligations after the price of the grass began to skyrocket.
He said: “Obviously, I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading up on it, but I think the winner can just say they’re not going to pay. After that, I think it goes to the second-highest bidder, and after that, I’m not sure if it goes to the third or fourth or fifth - their FAQs are quite vague.
“But I’m not out to make money. It’s not an entrepreneurial scheme or anything like that. We were just having a few ciders at the gig and the Stone Roses came into my head – and then on Sunday night I thought why not try it.”
