Are you interested in owning shares of nothing? (Or, given the recent performance of Wall Street, I should say more shares of nothing.)

I'm just looking into a site called oneseason.com . It was profiled in Time magazine's 11/3/08 issue ("Stocks Sinking? Be like Me: Buy Eli Manning" p. 66).

Apparently, people buy "shares" of athletes and the return or loss depends on other people's willingness to buy/sell that athlete subsequently. The selection of athletes seems limited. Given those limitations, it seems you cannot, say, buy early shares of Brian Matusz. But if you *yawn* would like to trade in Ryan Howard or ARod, they are available.

Ever heard of this Milt? Anyone?

Edit: I would bet that the prices of these "commodities" are driven up by a new influx of users from this publicity.

EDIT 2: I meant to include a link to this puzzling site: http://www.oneseason.com/page/faq/

Yeah, this is great.

I used to play something like this when I was in law school, competing against a few friends. There was a slight difference in that the worth of each athlete's share was entirely dependent on their on-field performance. Good fun.

Good point about the fun, Dan. That seems to be where the site can make its money. If thousands or more fans toss in $20-$50 for their favorite athlete, the sums could be huge. The site likely does not depend at all on the oddball that keeps several thou. locked up invested in, well, nothing. As a lark and for fun, it seems brilliant.

Speaking of the limited choice in players.... There appear to be 38 currently traded players in all four major sports combined. Here is the baseball list:

SOI First Name Last Name IPO Date Sport

BIGZ Carlos Zambrano September.28th.2008 Baseball
AROD Alex Rodriguez October.2nd.2008 Baseball
LONG Evan Longoria October.8th.2008 Baseball
PJLS Albert Pujols October.8th.2008 Baseball
JETR Derek Jeter October.10th.2008 Baseball
CCSB CC Sabathia October.4th.2008 Baseball
MANY Manny Ramirez October.5th.2008 Baseball
RHOW Ryan Howard October.13th.2008 Baseball

Yes Stanhouse. Pro trade comes to mind. I have never played it though.
http://www.protrade.com/

This is pretty ridiculous. You are probably better off hoping to get rich off of the trading cards that have pieces of bat, locks of hair, and tainted Vitamin B in them.

LOL!

Yes, you are right. But as pyramid schemes go, this one is pretty clever.