The Walking Dead is heavy with a foreboding sense of futility, the fear that everything our hardy band of survivors does to stay alive is just forestalling the inevitable. It’s a bleak, despairing worldview, and now you, too, can experience that daily sinking feeling for the low price of just $680,000—the cost on eBay of the town of Grantville, Georgia, the setting of Rick’s hometown on The Walking Dead.
Technically, you’re not buying the whole town, just the downtown, or rather, the loose assemblage of nine buildings that former Grantville Mayor and current owner Jim Sells refers to as “downtown.” Refusing to answer the question of whether he changed his last name to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, Sells purchased the buildings out of foreclosure during the recession, refurbished them, and is now looking to unload them. They were used as the setting for protagonist Rick Grimes’ hometown during the season three episode “Clear,” when Rick, Michonne, and Carl go on a supply run and end up supplying themselves with a hearty dose of crazy, courtesy of Morgan. It’s a dark, upsetting hour of television: so why not relive that fun on a recurring basis in perpetuity?
Sells touts the regular use of the area by movie shoots as a financial windfall for the new owners, a windfall of which he apparently wants no part, since he is selling the town on eBay. He also says the show itself has been a big source of income: “We have people coming from all over the world because of The Walking Dead, that’s paying the bills downtown,” Sells told local media. And since nothing says “This will generate money forever” like the once-used location shoot of a single episode of a television show now likely in the back half of its life span, the eBay ad stresses that the downtown could potentially be profitable at some point down the road, as long as you don’t need proof. But really, who can put a price tag on a crippling sense of doom?