“I lost my job earlier this year” – eBay seller reveals hardship of trying to flog All-Ireland tickets online

You can sense the sympathy coming his/her way in droves.

Who'd have thought that putting your All-Ireland ticket up for auction would cause so much hassle? One Wexford native is just trying to make a few quid but people and their bloody principles are determined to spoil it. Two All-Ireland football final tickets are in this person's possession but flogging them on eBay in a profitable auction was rendered impossible when a group of what was said to be Dublin supporters hijacked the bidding war and raked up the prices to heights they had no intention of honouring. So the seller had to eventually just give up and start an email process instead. Administration headaches aside, our hero has been taking no end of abuse since the decision to put the tickets online and has claimed that someone has even accused the seller of incest.

"To be honest, I'm sorry I started this whole thing at all," the anonymous seller told SportsJOE. "I'm getting tons of abuse already. "It might be worth mentioning that these people themselves - as well as anyone who makes obviously false bids that they've no intention of following through on - are in contravention of eBay rules and could be suspended or barred completely if reported. "I more than likely won't report them, but if yer man comes back and calls me a ****** ****** for a second time, then maybe I'll change my mind about that too."

It wasn't a decision the seller took lightly, to put the tickets up for sale online but times are tough.

"I thought long and hard about listing the tickets in the first place," he/she told SportsJOE. "Normally I'd give out myself about the sort of people that do so. But circumstances aren't great at the moment - I lost my job earlier this year, and while I've a new job now, I'm on a lot less money.

"I've car insurance due, and two kids birthdays coming up - and I thought this might get me a few hundred quid to help with those things. I ended up kind of deciding 'well others are going to list tickets anyway, so I might as well list these too'.

"It's gone absolutely haywire. I checked the bidding on Sunday morning and was surprised to see about €800 - even that was more than I would have expected. I didn't look again until Monday morning, and saw it was up to €12,000, which is just crazy. I wouldn't even accept that much. "I actually contacted that person through eBay to say that if they really wanted the tickets that badly, I'd sell for a much much lower price, but I never heard back from them again, so I have to assume it was just one of many fake bids."

The highest offer the seller believes to be genuine stands at €800. Someone's about to part with that sort of money for tickets to a GAA match.