Teen sensation Justin Bieber and singer/performance artist Lady Gaga have been duking it out lately on YouTube, seeing who can set a record for the most online views in history. So far, Justin is the winner, with an astonishing 546 million views of the video for his hit song "Baby" and Lady Gaga is in second place, with more than 379 million viewers watching her hit "Bad Romance." To put that in perspective, the population of the entire United States is "only" 307 million. So ... wow!
But there are other ways to judge popular culture, and one of them is eBay. Which performer, we wondered, had the most "stuff" listed on eBay?
It's not even close. The King of Rock-and-Roll is the undisputed King of eBay, with more than 100,129 items currently for sale (as of Friday afternoon). The most expensive thing we found was a decidedly interesting original painting (shown here) of Elvis Presley surrounded by teddy bears. It had a starting price of — are you ready? — $4,200,000. With free shipping, though, that's a bargain!
Other high-priced Elvis items included a 1967 lobby card for the movie Easy Come, Easy Go ($73,000), a sterling-silver jewelry box supposedly given to Priscilla by Elvis on Valentine's Day in 1968 ($50,000), and a mint and unplayed Sun 45 of "That's All Right, Mama" ($9,000).
So how did the other celebrities fare? Heck, they didn't even come close. Fans of Lady Gaga currently have their pick of just 21,842 items on eBay — photos, t-shirts, records, and all sorts of things. Justin Bieber currently has 20,836 items listed on eBay. Michael Jackson is actually ahead of them, with 29,086 items listed, but Britney Spears is way down the list, with just 12,442. Even our very own Justin Timberlake has only 2,485 items on eBay.
By comparison, a search for the Beatles, as a group, turned up 71,905 eBay items — an impressive showing, but still far short of Elvis. Even after all these years, it seems, the drawing power of Elvis Presley remains undiminished.
