Last week's ice brings $26 on eBay

Last week we told you about an enterprising Spring man who decided to cash in on last week's cold snap by selling a chunk of naturally formed Houston ice on eBay. Now for the rest of the story: When the ice auction ended, the hunk of cold stuff fetched a respectable $26 — not bad, really, considering you can make it at home for free.

Houstonist talked to the seller, Mathew Cournane, about the auction. He's from New Zealand, where it gets colder than it does in Houston, and he said the idea for keeping some natural Houston ice for posterity came as he was joking with his Texan girlfriend about the big deal everyone was making over the weather last week. "She said, 'You should put some ice in the freezer and keep it," and then I said I
should put it on eBay as a bit of a joke, and it kind of went from there," Cournane said. "This was at 11 o'clock at night [Tuesday] when the ice was just starting to form. I didn't have to go to far to get it. it all came from the back yard and a street sign on the corner near our house." To sweeten the deal, Cournane added two icy fig leaves from his yard, some icicles and a "genuine print of a leaf made from ice."

Cournane promised to donate a portion of the selling price to a charity that helps Houston's homeless, so he said he halfway expected the bidding to go even higher than $26. "But $26 for a bit of ice out of the back yard is pretty good, really," he said. More surprising than the price was the attention it got him: Cournane said he even received e-mails from Alaska, where his story apparently made the local news.

As far as delivering the ice, Cournane said he's not sure how that'll work out. The buyer lives in Houston, but as you can imagine, transporting ice intact is kind of a gamble. "I will try to keep it as good as possible, but if they want it posted then it will probably end up as Houston water," Cournane said. "They better be quick, though, because even in the freezer it seems to be shrinking a little."