Bids exceeding $40 million for a house where the late grunge rocker Kurt Cobain lived as a boy were not serious, the sellers say.
Since the nondescript, rust-colored house with white trim was offered on eBay last Thursday, the high offer from a serious bidder is $210,000, which is $10,000 over the minimum set by Ed and Jennifer McKee of Oregon City, Ore.
More than 50 bids had come in, the highest for more than $40 million, by the time the McKees began checking on the validity of the bidders.
“It feels good to be a millionaire – on paper, at least,” Ed McKee said. “It’s hard for us to take these huge bids seriously because there’s a lot of pranksters out there.”
The couple bought the 2,313-square-foot home, 70 miles southwest of Seattle, for $42,500 last month without knowing Cobain lived there from ages 11 to 15 with his father and stepmother. The seller was a bank that had foreclosed on the property.
An attorney for Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, and their daughter said Thursday the Cobain estate hadn’t authorized the auction.
“The estate will not be authorizing any commercial use of Mr. Cobain’s name or likeness at the property,” attorney Paul Karl Lukacs said.
The McKees buy old houses to refurbish and sell, but said they’ve done no work on the four-bedroom, two-bathroom house, which was built in 1908 and valued at $52,660 in 2000.
Much of the house – including Cobain’s bedroom – hasn’t changed since he lived there and the interior needs some work, McKee said.
Cobain, lead singer for Nirvana, committed suicide with a shotgun in his Seattle home on April 8, 1994. He was 27.
