You can find anything on eBay (clicky for more dots):
The key information:
For that price, I’d expect in-person hand delivery.
Stipulated: ZVNL110A MOSFETs aren’t in production and we’re buying from diminishing inventory, but (as of late December 2018) they’re still available for under a buck apiece in small quantities.
It could be a pricing algorithm corner case, a money laundering scheme, or just a typo that could happen to anyone. As the news sites put it, the seller did not respond in time for this posting …
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
I frequently find ebay and Amazon items listed the same way, I think they hope to just run into that person who doesn’t know any better and uses Amazon as an approved vendor. Especially since everything from ebay or Amazon is a good deal.
Saw a note a while ago saying Amazon will be the US Government’s official go-to vendor for small purchases, which may have been a specious claim based on having AWS provide a bunch of government cloud services.
What could possibly go wrong? [sigh]
I can only imagine whoever worked out that deal, we know it wasn’t Trump. Personally I think Amazon needs to be knocked back a few notches. Amazon needs to seriously step up their game and police what is being sold and the quality of those items. I find many better deals elsewhere. I heard one of the kiddies at work admit he was addicted to it, but he’s a millennial and really doesn’t know any better.
I’ll renew my Prime membership in January, but I’ve begun using Amazon as a catalog to find things, then look up other sources to cross-check the pricing. The “sold by Amazon” price can be significantly lower or higher than buying direct from the manufacturer, with shipping either free or significantly expensive.
I can’t follow the money very far in any case.
“What could possibly go wrong? [sigh]”
Nothing. Here comes Alibaba Customer Success Stories…
“China fake parts ‘used in US military equipment'”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-18155293
All the way from fake bolts to semiconductors.
Obligatory Sparkfun counterfeit story, with more linkies at the bottom: https://www.sparkfun.com/news/364
Amazon has even more employees on federal assistance than Walmart. I stopped buying from them years ago, and challenged myself to find better deals elsewhere. I have not failed once in all that time. Given their policy of shipping an “equivalent” item from a closer warehouse, it’s possible to get counterfeit goods even when buying from sellers offering the genuine article.
Ed, as you’re likely aware, Verical is a legit semiconductor distributor. Apparently they’re giving EBay a try as an alternate means to sell stuff, but you also can order from them directly. Oddly, for this very same part (and assuming you’re willing to buy at least 26 of them), they can be yours from the Verical site for about $0.25 apiece, plus shipping I assume: https://www.verical.com/pd/diodes-inc-fet-mosfet-zvnl110a-145450
I’d post a screenshot, but I have no idea how to do that in a comment :-)
Oh, hold it. I think I figured it out. There’s a second supplier listed on that Verical page. They’re selling that diode at $0.2548 each, but with a minimum order quantity of 4000. Well, 4000 * $0.2548 = $1019.20, which is suspiciously close to the $1018.80 shown in your EBay listing. I’d chalk this one up to a coding error somewhere that is generating an EBay listing for “one” piece yet calculating the EBay price based on the minimum order quantity.
Excellent sleuthing!
Given what I’ve seen of “unit pricing”, anything is possible: your explanation makes perfect sense.
Thanks for the effort!
A few days ago I bought a single item from Amazon. The web page offered me a free two-week trial subscription to Prime as a bonus. I declined. Nevertheless I was enrolled for the two weeks. I searched the Amazon site for a way to walk this back. They won’t let me! This is like the old joke about declining Chicken Soup at the {hospital | hotel} and having it administered anally in the middle of the night!
Apparently, if I turned off my Prime membership, they’d subject me to an infinite number of Dark Patterns to sign me up again: every interaction would have a large, colorful button “Do this and renew your Prime membership” and a tiny, beige button “Do this without Prime”.