Seattle Quake Rubble for Sale

March 1 -- If you missed the Seattle quake, don't worry — you can buy a piece of it on eBay.

Enterprising scavengers were selling more than 15 items of debris and rubble snatched from the quake zone, including a brick purported to be from the Starbucks headquarters building. And the takers were lining up to make a bid.

By this evening, a bidder had offered more than $22 for rocks "dropped from the ceiling of a room that used to be occupied by the DEA and used as a drug evidence vault," as described by the auctioneer, Seattle Web developer Myk O'Leary.

O'Leary said he hadn't expected to make any money — that he had posted the rubble as a lark. The rocks, he told ABCNEWS.com, are from the ceiling of the break room at his office and they sat there for several hours before he scooped them up. He said the DEA occupied the building before his company moved in.

"I didn't think anyone would actually bid on it, to be quite honest," he said.

Rubble connoisseurs can also pick up shards of brick supposedly from Seattle's historic Pioneer Square or one apparently from the Fenix Underground music club. None of the quake-related auctions had ended by 6:45 p.m. ET.

Gerta van Dijk, a potter who makes miniature ceramics for sale on eBay, turned out a "quake plate" almost as soon as her shop stopped rumbling. The tiny, handcrafted plate has been bid up to $17, but van Dijk said she expects it to fetch up to $100.

"We do a lot of commemorative-type [pieces]," van Dijk said. "When the quake hit, [her partner] came out and said, 'Quake plate!'"

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But some Seattleites weren't impressed with the rubble sale. O'Leary has gotten several angry e-mails from local people accusing him of profiting off of tragedy, he said.

"You must be desperate to make money off of an event that flooded homes and seriously hurt 30 people, especially when the event happened less than 5 hours ago," one e-mailer wrote.

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EBay doesn't have a rubble category, but this isn't the first time scavengers have sold such stuff on the site, company spokesman Kevin Pursglove said. When Seattle's Kingdome and Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Stadium were demolished, pieces of the buildings quickly appeared on eBay, he said.