BYTE MARKS
Hawaiiana on e-Bay more kitsch than quality
By Burt Lum
Last month, Honolulu newspapers covered a story about a seller on eBay (www.ebay.com) auctioning off a Hawaiian artifact from the Island of Kaho'olawe. The item was an 'ulu maika, a carved stone roughly the size of a hockey puck used in an ancient Hawaiian bowling game.
The fervor created by the potential auction drew attention from the Navy, the Kaho'olawe Island Reserve Commission, the University of Hawai'i and the Protect Kaho'olawe 'Ohana, among others.
Ultimately, the item was taken off eBay by the seller for fear of illegally selling an item allegedly taken from Kaho'olawe, which is both public property and on the National Register of Historic Places.
It's been several years since I did my first eBay article. I am glad to see eBay survive and thought it be a good time to revisit the site. This time, I wanted to see for myself what sort of interesting Hawaiiana items are available for auction.
To focus my effort. I did a search on Hawaiiana and came up with about 1,300 items.
But I found nothing headline-worthy. A search on "Kaho'olawe" came up empty. I did a search on " 'ulu maika" and "poi pounder" and found these items being sold for $99 and $333, respectively. The 'ulu maika was said to be from O'ahu and the poi pounder from the Big Island's Kohala district. It's hard to say whether the items were ancient or contemporary.
I also found a seller auctioning off old bottles. It was curious to note this seller's decision to not feature any Hawaiian artifacts in the future. The seller, whose eBay name is otec-da1, writes, "I apologize if any previous items mislead or showed disrespect for the Hawaiian culture."
I also found a Hawaiian warrior mask selling for $25 that looks strikingly similar to the mask I got bushwacked into buying from a Fijian sword seller. Also, several Hawaiian war clubs looked oddly Fijian. And there were many tacky tiki statues and carvings.
All I can say is caveat emptor. ;-)
Burt Lum is one click away at burt@brouhaha.net.
