In Reply to: selling illegal passports? posted by grum on Sunday, 16. October 2011 at 17:05 Bali Time:
it was a traveller's way of making extra funds to sell their passport, then go claim it was lost. this was long ago, and really prior to Bali being much of a tourist destination (in terms of numbers), it was a well known trick on the India/Katmandu circuit.
Maybe it is something like that? Sell and buy are words often confusing to non-English speakers - maybe they wanted to buy your passport.
Or.. maybe you look like someone who needs to buy one?