Flash Fiction Online's columnist, Bruce Holland Rogers, is participating as a writer in the Significant Objects Project. The premise of the project is:

A talented, creative writer invents a story about an object. Invested with new significance by this fiction, the object should — according to our hypothesis — acquire not merely subjective but objective value. How to test our theory? Via eBay!

Curators for the project purchase thrift store objects, for a few dollars. Writers in the project write a fictional story about their selected object. The object is then placed for auction on eBay, with the story serving as the object's description on the auction page. The winner receives the object, a printed copy of the story, and the author's thanks.

Bruce's auction object is an umbrella trinket. The object and story can now be viewed in an eBay auction. As with all objects that generate stories for the project, the auctioned object goes to the highest bidder and the proceeds go to the author of the story. Here are links to the object (Umbrella Trinket) and its auction.