Ian Usher auctions his whole life on eBay for $399,300 and starts over

When Ian Usher's marriage in Perth, Western Australia collapsed, the English-born carpet-store assistant manager faced the ordinary wreckage of a divorce: a house full of memories, a job that reminded him of the life he had lost. His lot description was blunt - 'I have had enough of my life! I don't want it any more!' - and instead of selling things piecemeal, he listed everything as one lot on eBay.

Bundle an entire life - house, car, job, motorbike, even introductions to his friends - into one eBay lot and sell it as the seed funding for a fresh start.

The 2008 auction bundled the three-bedroom house and its contents, the Mazda, the Kawasaki motorbike, a spa, a quad bike, a jetski, his job at a carpet store with a two-week handover, and - itemized - an introduction to his friends. The listing went viral worldwide; bids passed A$400,000 and the final price settled at US$399,300. Usher kept his promise to disappear from his old life, then converted the proceeds into a project with a deadline: 100 life goals in 100 weeks, tracked publicly at 100goals100weeks.com.

The two-year bucket list ran from swimming with sharks to running with the bulls and ended on July 4, 2010 at the crown of the Statue of Liberty, turning a rejected husband into a travelling author and speaker with a book and a global audience. In 2012 Disney bought the film rights to his story - the auction designed to liquidate one life became the first asset of a better-documented one.

In 2008, after his marriage broke down, Perth carpet-shop assistant manager Ian Usher did what thousands of divorced men do - and then did something they do not. Instead of drifting through a sad property division, he put his entire existence up as a single eBay lot: the house and everything in it, the car, the motorbike, the jetski, his job with a two-week handover, and, listed separately, an introduction to his friends.

The listing's opening line - 'I have had enough of my life! I don't want it any more!' - and its sheer strangeness carried it around the world. The auction closed at $399,300, and Usher kept his word to vanish from his old life, converting the proceeds into 100 goals in 100 weeks: sharks, bulls, tiny islands, and a finish on July 4, 2010 at the crown of the Statue of Liberty, all documented on his own site for the audience that had followed the sale.

The hustle's real product turned out to be the story. Usher wrote a book about the auction and the two years that followed, became a speaker, and in 2012 The Huffington Post reported that Disney had bought the film rights to his life. The man who sold everything he owned ended up owning the one asset that appreciated: the tale of the sale itself.

The bundle was the hook: no one had ever listed a whole life as one lot, and strangeness is what eBay's audience clicks on.

Honesty about the motive - heartbreak, stated in his own words - made the sale feel human rather than gimmicky, which is what earned the press.

The public deadline and the 100-goals list converted a one-off auction into a followable serial, retaining the audience after the sale closed.

He documented everything himself, so the story's value accrued to him rather than to the platforms and outlets retelling it.

Radical reframing turns a liquidation sale into a story people pay to join: what made the auction valuable was not the assets but the audience watching a stranger restart in public.

The sale completed in June 2008 and the 100-weeks project concluded on schedule at the Statue of Liberty in July 2010; Usher wrote 'A Life Sold' about the experience, travelled on to island-ownership experiments in the Caribbean, and licensed the story to Disney for a feature film in 2012. The auction became a reference point in eBay's own history of landmark listings and in every 'sell your life' story since - including imitators who bundled their apartments, wardrobes and friendships online in his wake.