Recently, on the Ali auction platform, a mobile phone number ending with 7 8’s (13X-8888-888, registered in Qingdao, Shandong province), was put up for auction with a starting price of 2.6 million yuan, but it ultimately failed to attract any bids within the 24-hour auction period.
In the mindset of mainland Chinese, “8” symbolizes prosperity, and a string of 7 “8”s is dubbed the “wealth number” of the highest specification.
According to a report by Sina Technology on April 5th, the description of the item indicated that the mobile number was 13**8888888 and registered in Qingdao, Shandong province.
Unlike some auctions of premium vanity numbers, this number does not come with a high monthly fee nor requires a prepayment for transfer, and can be used like a regular number.
There is no minimum spending requirement for this number, with a monthly rent of only 18 yuan. Even for a new owner, the package contents remain unchanged, local transfer is allowed, and there are no outstanding fees or other restrictions.
Despite the low monthly rent, the starting price (entry ticket) was set at 2.6 million yuan. The bidding increment was 10,000 yuan, with a bidding (participation fee) deposit as high as 300,000 yuan.
After 24 hours of auctioning, although there were 7,112 visitor counts to the listing, not a single person placed a bid until the last second, resulting in the auction being concluded with no successful sale.
The event sparked heated discussions among netizens.
A comment from “Public Opinion” stated: People who like these types of numbers are misled by vanity. A phone number is simply a communication identifier, it cannot bring wealth or power, nor serve as food or transportation. Spending a high price to acquire it is not worthwhile.
A comment from “Tomorrow will be better dkcpF” remarked: People nowadays are more enlightened.
A comment from “Bridge 684” mentioned: People these days are not easily deceived.
A comment from “Red Bean Sends Lovesickness 0823” expressed: It’s normal for the auction to fail, reflecting the sanity of society.