That’s Outrageous!

WORLD WIDE WEIRD

AT YOUR BIDDING If you’re in the market for a decommissioned cop car or a military carrier plane, look no further than GCSurplus. ca, a Canadian government website that auctions off Crown assets. The page’s appeal isn’t limited to military buffs. When Canadian travellers are unable to pay import duties on purchases made abroad, wares may be seized and resold online. That’s how the police wound up auctioning off Rolex watches and lacy lingerie. The most luxurious items, says the GCSurplus program’s senior director, Sandi Wright, are often vehicles confiscated from drug lords and other convicted felons. “If you find a BMW, Lamborghini or Maserati on our site,” she says, “chances are it’s part of the proceeds of crime.”

COLD COMFORT In 2015, while shovelling his driveway in Boston after a blizzard, Kyle Waring, 28, decided to monetise his labour – by selling the leftover snow to winter lovers in sunnier parts of the US. In its first year, his internet business, Ship Snow Yo, hawked almost 700 kilograms of the white stuff. For about US$150, buyers received a 5.5 kg package of freshly shovelled product. “Even if 10 or 15 per cent of it melts,” says Waring, “you’re left with plenty for a snowman.”

MACABRE MEMENTOES Every few days, 26-year-old Nicola Hebson rambles through Lancashire, UK, searching for road kill and other decaying specimens. It’s not a grisly hobby – it’s work. For the past five years, she’s run the online shop Dead Good Jewellery. Hebson has sold more than 600 pieces, including pendants with insects encased in resin and amulets in which taxidermy pheasant or crow’s feet extend from mounds of clay. “If I find something dead, I feel that nature is offering it up to me,” says Hebson. “But I’d never kill anything to make jewellery. That seems unnecessarily morbid.”