A VW fit for a cardinal
Courtesy: Deutsche Welle
� 06.05.2005
VW Owner Counts his Blessings
A VW fit for a cardinal
A 21-year-old who had the good luck of buying a Volkswagen whose seats
were
once warmed by the current Pope is suddenly flush with cash. Divine
intervention? No: eBay.
In January, Benjamin Halbe paid a used car salesman 9,500 euros ($12,
204)
for a 1999 Volkswagen Golf and hit the jackpot.
But the 21-year-old from Olpe, in western Germany, didn't know that
until a
few months later when, after checking the previous owner's records, he
found
that a Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had owned the car. Shortly thereafter,
Ratzinger changed his name to Pope Benedict XVI, succeeding the late
Pope
John Paul II, and sending Halbe on his way to some serious cash.
On May 5, the day of the Acension, Halbe's silver-gray Golf sold for
188,938.88 euros on eBay. The winning bidder was an American online
casino,
which contacted Halbe minutes later to ask about his bank details.
"I am more than happy that I was able to sell it for such a sum," said
Halbe, surrounded by friends, some of whom helped him come up with the
plan
to auction off the Volkswagen.
More cash passed up
Of course, it could have gone for much more. Had eBay not experienced a
server crash 40 minutes before the final bell sounded, the price would
have
likely continued upward.
"I feel completely deceived," said Helmut Drossman, an ad agency chief
from
Bavaria who was unable to bid on the car in the final minutes.
"I'm frustrated, because we could have offered significantly more than
the
final price," said Thorsten Senneke, who bid for a group of investors,
according to the news agency dpa.
But a re-sale price of almost 10 times what he paid for is not half-bad
either. Halbe, who earns a little bit of money doing his required civil
service duty, plans to spend his hard-earned money on a new car, maybe
a
vacation "and put the rest in a bank."
As for the online casino that won the bid, it will have to be careful
not to
promise too much in advertising the former Pope mobile. Ratzinger never
had
a driver's license and, by all accounts, he owned the car for little
less
than a year.