And some turd-burgling assclowns are already profiteering on eBay. At last check, bids were up to over $5000 on certain Premium Bundles with two games. I won’t link to it because I’m not sure what the legal niceties are. Just go to eBay and search for ‘Xbox 360.’
No, I didn’t add an extra zero. Five. Thousand. Dollars.
I’m torn by revulsion for the profiteers, envy (after all, I would gladly have stood in line and dumped a 360 for a $4500 profit), and a mixture of pity and contempt for the slavering consumers who make these machinations possible.
Actually, it’s kind of funny. People were profiteering even before the 360 went on sale, throwing auctions up on ebay for nonexistent systems they promised to ship today. I wonder if they refunded the money to the people who paid a thousand dollars or more and couldn’t deliver.
I would be very surprised if the ones that are selling in the ballpark of $5000+ weren’t being bid on by new members just trying to sabotage auctions. I know many Xbox 360s were won by someone who goes by the name of Xbox360LicksBalls and has a 0 feedback rating has bought several.
If these people have the money to spend, then who cares if they spend a thousand, or two thousand, or five thousand dollars on a game system? And how is it profiteering to resell the systems via eBay for more than the MSRP?
If people are willing to pay the price, then it’s their money — it doesn’t necessarily make them foolish for doing so. Millionaries play video games too.
um, j, not to side with carl or anything, but check out the definition of profiteering (via dictionary.com).
Well, not that I disagree with Dictionary.com or anything, but I’ve always though that someone who was “profiteering” was profitting by *unethical* means. If goods are in very short supply, then we should expect the price of those goods to rise steeply in the face of very strong demand.
Do you blame Microsoft for launching without having systems on hand to meet demand? They do that on purpose, you know. Carl bought a “core” system, I believe, correct? He probably wouldn’t have done that if the 360 hadn’t been in such short supply — and since he did do it, Microsoft moved one more unit at launch. And a unit that they might not have sold, otherwise, since it doesn’t have the hard drive included. What are the odds that, after buying the hard drive, Carl’s system will end up being more expensive then the unit that has the hard drive included? I wonder.
Anyway, I don’t see what’s wrong with selling 360s on eBay for a million dollars, if that’s what people are willing to pay. If you don’t want to pay that much, then I suggest waiting until after Christmas. The retailers will have a glut of the systems on the shelves for Christmas sales, and I think it’s quite likely that one will be able to find units at a discount come mid-January (for example, as open returns).
well, merriam webster leans more in that direction, but still seems to have unreasonable profit as the primary definition, least how i’m reading it. oed.com (after a couple bugmenot attempts) gives the following:
in any case, as someone who obtained an obscene amount of profit by flipping va linux ipo shares, i can’t really cast too many stones, but i’d say ebay flipping the 360s falls into roughly the same category.
You flipped obscene profit on VA Linux?
Tell me you didn’t reinvest in another dotcom.
Dave took the money; he didn’t reinvest it. He was very smart to sell in the short term, actually, as the history of the stock price after that point shows.
Also, he got killed on taxes, thanks to the AMT. So it was hardly a big pay day for him, as I recall.
I can’t talk to my dad about stocks at all. He’s still mad that I told him not to get in on the Yahoo! IPO back when he had the chance. Of course, back then, I don’t think anyone expected the shares to end up being worth much — as I kept trying to explain to my dad, “all Yahoo! does is index other web sites”.
This, children, was back when the web was small, and search engines were mostly viewed as helpful but not strictly required…
yeah, by flipping, i meant “sold real fucking quick on ipo day when the price went down from 10x what i paid to 9x”. at that point, i figured only naked avarice would have made me hold them any longer.
got killed by short-term capital gains, actually, not the amt, but it did enable me to dig my way out of the credit card hole i’d dug during college, and to get a really nice computer.
Heh, you’re lucky it’s your dad, J.
Personally, if I’d missed out on the chance to make millions because of the advice of someone who wasn’t an expert financial analyst, I might be tempted to take that someone out on a very long ride into the desert, with a shovel and a bag of lye in the trunk.
And now I remember that, Dave. Shortly after, the company went into a fiery tailspin. So, avarice aside, you got out while the gettin’ was good.