One of the odd side effects of the digital age is the gradual loss of the acres and acres of handwritten or typed manuscripts that could be catalogued by archivists interested in following the career of an author. With "save" taking primacy over "save as," those windows (no pun intended) into the process of an author stay shut. Probably there are a lot of writers who prefer it that way. Like most smaller changes wrought by advancing technology these days, I find this more interesting than depressing or uplifting. However, it does mean that two hundred years from now, probably nobody is going to be bidding six figures for a copy of my Scrivener file.

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Much more valuable than your Crayola collector's tin, a Japanese man is attempting to auction off the Earth on Yahoo Auctions. Even weirder, at the time of this writing, the auction has 2,772 bids, with the current price sitting at 9,912,356,678 yen, or about 123,472,279 bucks, with four days remaining.

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These things happen a lot more often than I thought was possible. I mean, the odds! A woman purchased a painting at a flea market which wound up being from renowned French painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir and is going to sell it for a ludicrous profit. No, the above image is not the one in question but the picture a website called What's Up Finland? used on their post. I just couldn't resist. The real Renoir, and all the details, are after the jump.

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A Chewbacca headpiece worn by actor Peter Mayhew in the original Star Wars trilogy just sold at auction for a lot of money (plus a few other props). This is interesting news but I can't help but think, "I thought it smelled bad on the outside..."

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In these hard economic times, it's good to know that some people out there are still storing enough money under their mattress for a sound investment or a little indulgence. In this case, someone had an extra $70,000 laying around so they could engage in a bidding war for an actual, gigantic prop from the set of Star Trek: The Original Series. But the Galileo NCC-1701/7 wasn't the only piece of pop culture memorabilia up for auction. See what else had people bidding, like Gene Wilder's original Willy Wonka costume and more Star Trek stuff.

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At an art auction held at Sotheby's in New York City yesterday, Edvard Munch's The Scream was sold for a record $119,922,500, quite a bit more than the $80 million the auction house thought the famous painting would snag. The item sold at the auction is one of four known versions of the painting, with the other three all in Norwegian museums.

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Back in 1807, when a young New Jersey resident named Mary Antrim embroidered the farm scene pictured above, the thought of something like this -- a children's needlepoint sampler -- being sold at a fancy auction for just over a million dollars would have been preposterous. In fact, I would venture a guess that people actually, genuinely used the word preposterous in everyday conversation back in 1807. But that is exactly what happened -- someone bid on and won this 19th century farm house scene, shelling out $1.07 million to own a piece of folk art/thing a kid made to pass the time 200 years ago.

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The Raspberry Pi, everybody's favorite $25 PC, has finally gone into beta, and some of those beta boards are up for auction by the company on eBay. It is a $25 PC though, that's the selling point; how much could it possibly go for? Oh, I don't know, how about $2,714 (£1,750), and that's with 5 days remaining. For all of you who are screaming "That is missing the point!" right now, there are a couple of mitigating factors that make this all make a little more sense. First of all, these are limited edition, man. Haven't you ever taken a class in Economics? Also, 100% of the purchase price is going to the Raspberry Pi Foundation, devoted to promoting the study of computer science, so it's for a good cause.

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Back in April, we reported that a very valuable comic that was owned, then stolen, from Nicolas Cage had been recovered, but not returned to the comic-loving actor. His near-perfect issue of Action Comics #1 was taken from him back in 2000 and was found in an abandoned storage space purchased by someone who has remained anonymous. However, rather than returning the comic to its devastated owner (who may have received an insurance payout for his loss), it was handed over to collectibles expert Mark Balelo, who then passed it on to Stephen Fishler, who had, ironically, sold the comic to Cage in the first place. Now, the comic is going to auction, where it is expected to break records. But probably not with Nicolas Cage's money.

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'Tis the season for weird Superman memorabilia, and our latest installment comes courtesy of the co-creator of Superman himself, Jerry Siegel. As in, this item up for auction came right out of the head of Jerry Siegel, and it has nothing to do with his creativity. Because it's his hair. Comic Connect is auctioning off locks of Jerry Siegel's hair.

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Fancy auction house Christie's is presently auctioning off an original Apple I computer from 1976, lovingly designed and handcrafted by Apple's founding genius Steve Wozniak while Steve Jobs sort of sat around and did nothing. With an asking price of between £100,000 and £150,000 (~$161,600 to $242,400), the original Apple I has the sort of specs that we associate with deficient calculators today -- 8 KB of RAM, a MOS 6502 microprocessor with clock speeds between 1 and 2 MHz -- but was nevertheless a feat of engineering for its day. The unit for sale is the 82nd Apple I built, according to Christie's.

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