No miracle sale for Virgin Mary pebble

It was the holy stone that gathered no dosh.

A pebble bearing the apparent image of the Virgin Mary failed to sell on auction site TradeMe, but its owner plans to try a different auction site closer to Easter.

Christchurch woman Lisa-Marie Corlet found the rapturous stone on Kaikoura's South Beach almost two years ago.

She stored the pebble but decided to auction it after finding herself down on financial luck through redundancy, hefty debts and dental problems.

Corlet wanted $50,000 for the 1cm-wide beach find. However, the top bid of $31,600 was revealed to be a hoax.

The false bids were removed but the final bid fell $1000 short of her $28,000 expectations, so Corlet withdrew the pebble.

Although the stone had not earned her any money, the experience and media attention were fun, she said.

"I was pretty exhausted at the end," Corlet said.

"Sometimes I just had to turn my phone off but it taught me a lot about New Zealanders as individuals.

"There was a lot of support out there."

She received hundreds of messages through TradeMe, but many rubbished the pebble.

"But some people were really cool.

"Mums and dads were telling me they were taking family trips to the beach together and they hadn't done that in years.

"Another woman thanked me for a weekend of no house-cleaning because she was glued to the computer screen watching the auction.

"It was a positive experience and even though it didn't sell, I'm just going to go with the flow and see what happens on EBay."

The Virgin Mary pebble is not the only unusual holy image.

A scorched Jesus-like image was burned into a fish stick in America leading to the nickname the Son of Cod, and the Virgin Mary also made an appearance on a grilled cheese sandwich -- dubbed the Father, Son and the Holy Toast.

- © Fairfax NZ News