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There is clearly some confusion in this thread.

He didn't actually make the $1-buying ebay bot from xkcd.

He made a completely different buying bot for some new zealand auction site: trademe.

trademe is pretty much just the New Zealand version of ebay (albeit with a better reputation and more engaged community). They are also impressive because they cloned ebays business model early enough to prevent ebay from dominating the New Zealand online auction sector (as ebay did in Australia with ebay.com.au) and sold in 2006 for $700 million (NZD) ($550m in USD).

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