Monkey Phone Call!

The time: The end of the dot com bubble.
The place: Journeyman Press, a now defunct 4 person division of the US Playing Card Company.
The idea: Replicate the excitement and anguish of online auctions in a card game.
The result: eBay the card game!

Ok, so it wasn't actually the end of the dot com bubble, but actually sometime in 2001, after it had already burst.  Either way, someone, somewhere decided that it would be a good idea to buy the rights and produce an eBay card game.  Listen, I don't pretend to understand the reasoning either but let's just live with it.  Ok?

So, what's the point of the game then?  Well, put simply, it's to buy items that match specific categories.  The first person to match all the categories wins.  Sounds simple, doesn't it?  Well, not really…

The first kicker is the rules sheet.  Sure it's only two sides of a fairly large page, but only one person out of the four of us who played this could actually manage to finish more than one side.

So, we'll skip the rules and learn as we go along.  To tell the truth, that was probably easier anyways.

Basically, there's 4 types of cards: curio cards, bidding cards, the starter card, and item cards.  There's plenty of cards, and at any one moment you could have up to 4 different types to take care of, but at least the colours are designed to keep you from mixing them up.  There still were issues with people confusing bidding and curio cards though.

Anyways, basic idea: at the start of the game, each player draws a set number of curio cards.  Each of these cards has a category on it, the first person to acquire one item for each curio card they have wins the game.

So, how do you go about acquiring items?  Well, since this is eBay, you bid on them.  The bidding cards contain either cash which let you bid on one item per turn or actions which let you screw over other players.  Each turn your're allowed to bid on one item and/or play one action card.  The items cards represent a variety of urban legends (e.g. the jet powered hatchback), oddities, and things you'd actually expect to find on eBay.

Enough with the rules already.  I believe I did say they were boring an complicated.  Instead, let's answer the important question: is it any fun to play?  Well, yes and no.

For starters, the game isn't as bad as you'd expect when someone says 'Hey, did you know there's such a thing as an eBay card game?'  It's amusing in it's own little way (monkey phone call), but as James pointed out it probably would be a lot more fun after a few drinks.  The only problem with that is the game is complicated enough as it is.

What do I mean?  I mean you have to constantly be paying attention or the game will get screwed up.&bsp; For starters, each round ends when everyone has taken a turn, at which point you turn all the dice marking the length of time for the auctions left down by one.  If you mess up and fail to flip one down, you're in trouble.  Then, after each round, the person who started the last round doesn't start the next round.  Rather, you pass the starter card to the left and play continues from there until all players have played again.

Additionally, regardless what the back of the box says, the game is in no ways fast paced.  It may be over quickly, but turns seem to take forever.

Final verdict?  If you find it in a dollar shop (as was this ccase), buy it and chuckle.  You probably won't feel the urge to play it more than the initial time though.

I almost forgot, there's even a card in there for Nancy.