In a move that seems frankly insane until you remember that people pay the equivalent of a nice condo for old Star Wars props, Time reports that one lucky (?) Rick And Morty fan is now on the hook for $14,700 for an unopened container of McDonald’s Mulan SzeChuan teriyaki dipping sauce someone found while cleaning their car. That’s not the asking price, that’s the actual closing price, driven up by 16 eBay users in a heated bidding war. Hopefully, the winner is actually a wealthy weirdo and not some stoned college student doing it as a joke, because declaring bankruptcy over a Rick And Morty reference would be absurd (although admittedly a good story).
“I just bought a really old car, while cleaning it I found a packet of this sauce,” the seller states, not specifying whether the packet was found under the front seat or in the glovebox or what. “After watching the recent episode of Rick And Morty I went online to see if it was worth anything. Turns out it was,” they write, adding, “I hope somebody who wants to eat some 20 year old gnarly sauce gets this. I would prefer not to sell it to a collector.” Sadly for the seller, given the closing price, it seems like a given that the buyer is a collector.
Fans without $15k just sitting around have plentiful opportunities to bid on more affordable McDonald’s Mulan Szechuan Dipping Sauces on eBay, as long as you don’t mind “fan-made” approximations of the real thing—or, in the case of one seller, a drawing of the packet for $5.00. Or you could annoy McDonald’s until it brings the sauce back, a real possibility according to the Chicago Sun-Times. “We never say never because, when our customers speak, we listen,” McDonald’s spokeswoman Terri Hickey tells the paper. And it might not even take 97 years, given that a live-action Mulan remake is coming in 2018.