Bidding on Paris' Tinkerbell

Wed., Aug. 25, 2004 4:50 PM PDT by Joal Ryan

To heiress Paris Hilton, Tinkerbell was worth $5,000. To value-minded eBay users, a piece of the once-wayward Chihuahua's going for a not-too-shabby three figures.

Bidding on a reputedly authentic Tinkerbell reward poster reached $132.50 on the auction site Tuesday afternoon.

Hilton was spotted putting up a similar, if not the same, poster when the pet went missing from her West Hollywood home nearly two weeks ago.

The poster, looking like a B-movie version of a ransom note with its haphazardly arranged cut-out text and photocopied pictures, offered a $5,000 reward, and asked anyone with information to call "Wendy," as in Wendy White, Hilton's assistant. "Please help this dog is like a child to me," the poster urged.

The eBay seller put the reward poster up for auction Aug. 18, the same day Hilton's camp announced that Tinkerbell was back home with its adopted mother. Bidding was opened at $45.

In an email interview Wednesday, the seller, whom declined to divulge his identity, said he came across the poster that night up in the Hollywood Hills.

"I did not see her putting it up," he said.

On his auction page, he noted that, "out of respect for Paris," he didn't take down the sign until Tinkerbell's MIA status had been resolved.

Billed as a "collector's item," the auction hit a snag Tuesday night, when, per the seller, eBay removed the item because of a site rule prohibiting the selling of personal information. In the matter of the Tinkerbell poster, the personal information was Wendy White's phone number.

The eBay seller excised the piece of paper containing the number from the sign, and the auction resumed. Bidding, which was to close Wednesday, now is set to end on Friday. (The link is here.)

Hani Durzy, an eBay spokesman, said the site, with 29 million items for sale through its virtual marketplace, couldn't vouch for the authenticity of the Tinkerbell poster. That said, as of Monday, the site hadn't received any complaints that the poster was bogus, Durzy said.

Hilton's rep Gina Hoffman said she didn't know if the for-sale poster was a Paris original, nor did she know how many posters the Simple Life star made and distributed throughout Southern California.

"It's something she did herself," Hoffman said.

Hoffman said she hadn't even seen the eBay auction page--apparently the power firm of PMK/HBH Public Relations restricts in-house access to the potentially productivity-sucking site.

And Hoffman guessed Paris Hilton, late of the Nicky Hilton nuptials, was too busy making the big-screen college comedy Pledge This! to have been surfing eBay herself.

As survivors of the long, national nightmare will recall, Tinkerbell went missing Aug. 12. The bitch--that would be Tinkerbell--was reported as having been found safe six days later.

Nickel Flowers, who produces and sells recreations of Old West outlaw posters via her site, Wild Bill's Posters & Gifts, said the $150 or so the Tinkerbell reward sign might fetch trumps anything she has to offer, price-wise.

On Wild Bill's, even a Butch Cassidy poster, whose capture lawmen sought for a Hilton-esque $5,000, goes for a mere buck. Still, Flowers understood why a plea for a missing dog could net 150 times as much.

Said Flowers: "I guess there's only a limited number of Tinkerbell posters out there."

(Originally published Aug. 24, 2004 at 5:10 p.m. PT.)