Nails of the Crucifixion on eBay

A fellow claims to have three of the nails used to attach Christ to the cross a couple of thousand years ago.

If you believe him, you can buy them for 10 thousand euros on eBay.

Be warned that the nails are in poor condition and would need to be straightened and de-rusted before you could reuse them in a carpentry or woodworking project. Link (Thanks, Patrick!)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Absent

Just like the real “nails”, they’re actually a type of magic mushroom, look closely.
Captain Squiffy

Of course you know that you all are goin’ straight to hell. Bring some dogs to toast on a stick.

Peace of Christ,

Cap’n Squiffy
markbellis

You can get guns, dildos and antique porn on eBay Belgium!
Cpt. Tim

Quake III!
Lord Humongous

This is clearly bogus. Everyone knows the nails were used to make the Iron Crown of Lombardy
Takuan

sold some at a yard sale,along with some splinters from the True Cross, a toe bone of Buddha and some other junk.

People will buy anything if you give them a good story. You can see the wheels turning in their heads as they listen to your spiel and then start thinking about how they in turn will tell their friends where they got this lawn chair used by the Dalai Lama.
Songe

Paramahamsa Yogananda noticed in his encounter with stigmatist Therese Neumann (who did not eat or drink, and rarely slept), that the wounds on her hands were crescent shaped, and that in the east this was traditionally the shape of nails. Such nails were not used in the west.
arkizzle

“” Be warned that the nails are in poor condition and would need to be straightened and de-rusted before you could reuse them in a carpentry or woodworking project. “”

Made me smile.. out loud (?)
SomeGuy

How many stigmata does it take to change a light bulb?

Two. One to change the bulb and another to plug the hole in his palm so the bulb doesn’t fall on the floor.
Giovanni

There’s an old saying that if you took all the splinters from the cross there would be enough wood to build a boat.

I think it’s especially applicable here.
jonathan_v

“Be warned that the nails are in poor condition and would need to be straightened and de-rusted before you could reuse them in a carpentry or woodworking project”

Yes, but in this condition they should be more than adequate to be used in the crucifixion of the seventh coming of christ. Duh.
Keneke

#5: a miracle akin to the loaves and fishes!
Takuan

aye, and the gourd and the sandal
saint_al

Mark Twain visited many churches in Europe on a Grand Tour. He remarked that he’d seen enough nails of the True Cross “to fill a keg”.
halfsquatch

It’s impossible to nail something that didn’t exist. It’s like finding a map to Santa’s workshop.
dbarak

Once bitten, twice shy. I am NOT falling for this scam again!
Rob Cockerham

There are four sets of nails that can claim to have been used in the cruxifiction.
Because the attachment method changed pretty much every week, from nails to iron rings, rope, leather and cloth, the nailing method didn’t always go as planned.

The first set did not have large enough heads, so they popped through his skin and could not hold. The second three nails were used on his wrists, but bent, presumably because the nailer was nervous about what he was doing.

A more experienced nailer was brought in on the third try, but he brought an iron mallet, which was unfortunately, better forged than the nails. Two bent, one shattered.

Finally, on the fourth try, the deed was done, using five spikes which were re-purposed from the cart of a food vendor, where they had been used to hold dried hocks of ham.

The nails which were used in the crosses of the two thieves went in and held without incident. These six nails could also be considered to have been used “in the cruxifiction” because they were used at the event. The man on the left hand side of Jesus was cruxified for theft, and the man on the right was cruxified for making up a really long, complicated story about a historical event, just to make it sound legitimate.
romwell

More praise to Rob ! That was AWESOME ! It was so fascinating and easy to read – I bought into it, until the last line ! =)
Antinous

One thing that I don’t get. Some people seem to suggest that there was no Jesus or that he wasn’t crucified. Are we not all clear that the non-metaphysical parts of the story are vaguely factual? Red Sea partings and burning bushes aside, the Bible is a pretty accurate historical document, as multi-thousand-year-old chronicles go. I mean, it’s at least as reliable as Fox News: religious, conservative, biased and unintelligible, but you can pick out the real story if you look carefully.

Pardon me while I go shave off the hair from off of my feet.
dbarak

Rob, possibly one of the greatest posts in Internet history. Bravo!!!
Patrick Austin

How can a book written in separate sections, decades or centuries after events transpired, be considered accurate? That’d be like me recording stories my grandparents tell that their grandparents told them about their grandparents. Sure, they might get the gist of it (crazy dude got crucified) but any detail is going to be iffy at best. Not to mention the sheer number of conflicting stories in all the different books.

The most accurate stuff seems to come from non-biblical sources..ie, first person accounts by whomever was literate enough to write and was there at the time. Most of that stuff didn’t make the final cut. At least, that’s how it seems to this not-a-biblical-scholar.
devophill

Rob Cockerham, you’re my hero.
MORBOT

Jesus Christ, what a deal!
Takuan

who wants to crucify Rob!? Hands up!
Smoakes

Rob Cockerham is so awesome.
noen

Romania: Your Sole Source of Stigmata-Afflicted Vagina Bears
dculberson

They look suspiciously similar to a rail spike.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_spike
arkizzle

OK, but before we crucify him, we should waterboard him to find out where he has hidden his time machine.

Rob, where did this detailed description come from?
Bob

Jesus walks into an inn, holds up three nails, and says, “Can you put me up for the night?”
Santa’s Knee

“A fellow claims to have three of the nails used to attach Christ to the cross a couple of thousand years ago”

“…three of…”?

There’re more?

Who nailed Mary’s son to the cross – Habitat for Humanity?
bricology

Wow! Makes me wonder how much my signed first edition of the Bible is worth!
samuraizenu

Rob, absolute freakin’ genius. You had me going all the way to the last sentence. I figured you were quoting one of the gnostic gospels.
Liz Burgess

Rob, sadly, your story falls apart at the word “ham.” ;)
Antinous

Jesus walks into an inn, holds up three nails, and says, “Can you put me up for the night?”

Jesus’s last words on the cross: “Hey, I can see my house from here!”

But seriously, we could get Jesus DNA from those nails and prove that he was a reptilian overlord.
Takuan

nope, t’was a Roman ham wagon. What did those Romans ever give us anyways?!
mr_tumnus001

I’ll buy all three… but only if I can use them on the bloke trying to sell them!
Don’t worry, I’ll do it right. I’ve got this mate up in Austria that’ll loan me this SPEAR OF DESTINY old Adolf bought off of the telly’s shopping network!
Haroun

It’s obvious they’re fake, if they were real his asking price would be in good ole Murican dollars, fercrissake.
Symphonix

I’m reminded of Blackadder the First selling his religious artifacts, including his “Nose of St Peter” that came in a box of 30.
Rider

Those are old rail road spikes. Man me and my friends used to pull those up by the hundreds out this old abandoned railway line in the Catskills.
TayArgJosh18

“Peter! Peter!”
“Yes my Lord?”
“Can you run home and grab my pumps? These spikes are killing me.”
Simon Greenwood

Has Jeffrey Vallance put in a bid? Or is he selling them?
Ian70

I wanted to buy some preserved poop from Mohammed’s magical flying horse but I believe it burned up upon re-entry.
hellhead

I’ve got like 15 of these nails of Jesus at home.

Old hat.
Rob Cockerham

Yeah! Putting the fiction back in cruxifiction! Thanks all for your nice comments.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator

In any given week, there’ll be a supposed fragment of the True Cross (or a bit of the crown of thorns, or a scrap of the BVM’s veil…) for sale on eBay, viz.:

This week’s bit of the True Cross

For more sophisticated ironists, they also have an elaborately packaged relic of Saint Margaret of Antioch. She’s a very cool saint, but to the best of my knowledge she left behind no relics. (In fact, she was being denounced as apocryphal by the end of the Fifth Century CE, which is practically an achievement.) I’m not surprised by this item. I’ve long cherished suspicions about that style of relic attestation on eBay.

Now, I really do own a Roman nail. It dates from the first century CE and was found at Inchtuthill in 1959. It was part of a huge (for the ancient world) stash of nails owned by the Roman military. The nails on the outside of the stash rusted, eating up all the available oxygen, which preserved nails that were further on in. The metal is nevertheless quite brittle.

Note: if you ever have to fake a Roman nail, the head on this thing is about twice the size of the head on a comparable modern nail.

Patrick Austin (56), do you really want an answer to that question? There are multiple schools of thought on it, and most of them could fill a library with their books on the subject.
wackyvorlon

Aside from the fact that they are visibly cut nails and far too modern in design :P
franko

you’d think someone would have taken better care of them, considering what they are supposed to be. : P
dbarak

“nope, t’was a Roman ham wagon. What did those Romans ever give us anyways?!”

Roman Meal bread? With ham and Swiss and a bit of spicy mustard.
EdT.

Hey, wait a second! I didn’t notice ‘pule’ in the description before…
Takuan

alright, the bread I’ll grant you, and maybe the roads… and sewers… but what else did the lousy Romans ever do for us!?
Takuan

can you really see them as cut nails? Couldn’t they be forged?
dbarak

Roman hands and Russian fingers?
hellhead

Think about how many of these nails BNSF has. So many they use them to hold the tracks down.
plinker

Jesus walks into a hotel, slaps three nails on the desk and says, “Hey can ya put me up for the night”?
plinker

Sorry Bob. I didn’t see that you had beat me to it.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator

Noen, I am stunned.

Did you notice that it says Cui bono underneath them?
Takuan

for jeebus’s sake, read the damn thread. That’s the third time so far. There MUST be other jokes out there. (Always look on the bright side…)
Takuan

Why did Jesus cross the road?

Because he was nailed to the chicken!

What did Jesus say as he was being crucified?

“Ahhhhhhhhhhh…!”

What did Jesus say when he was up on the cross?

“This was one Hell of a way to spend my Easter vacation.”

What’s the difference between Jesus Christ and an oil painting?

You only need one nail to hold up a picture

Why can’t Jesus eat M&M’s?

They keep falling through his hands
Takuan

What is the difference between a Buddhist vacuum cleaner and a conventional vacuum cleaner?

A Buddhist vacuum is the one without all the attachments
noen

The Passover Plot

Historicity of Jesus

The Bible and history
Evil Jim

Nah. I prefer to use shiny new railroad spikes for my crucifixion parties.