PS3 Campout: Was it Worth it, Part 2

As I suspected, the market is flooded, and prices have come down considerably since yesterday. Granted, we're past 24 hours from the last post (about 34 hours), but my random very non-scientific sampling of eBay's Playstation3 auctions is very telling.

First, there's still a bunch of numbnuts out there who think that their "Buy it Now!!"s going for $20,000 are going to even garner a page-view. Good luck with that now that there's 380 pages of Playstation3 eBay auctions. There's more than 18,000 PS3 auctions today, and there were 12,200 yesterday. Some folks evidently haven't figured out the whole supply/demand market trend thing.

Top price for a system today looks to be around the $2,200 mark, less than a third of what it was yesterday. The average median price seems to be roughly $1,200 or so. I actually saw one going for $800 or so with just 20 minutes left to go on it. Not exactly record profits.

Same as yesterday, here's the profit breakdown if you sat in line since Tuesday to get rid of that PS3 on eBay:

$2200: $22.22/hr
$1200: $8.33/hr
$810: $5.53/hr (This guy only waited in line for 38 hours. Was it worth it?) Note: his auction might go for more, there was about 10 minutes left on it at time of this writing.

Comments

[almarota]

what if you factor in tax, and free shipping (which I noticed most are providing). In california tax is 8.25% .. which translates to about 49.50, (whereas oregon has no sales tax), shipping i'm assuming uhm 15 to 20, plus ebay fees. uhh yeah... I would have sold my spot in line for a grand, or 500.

[kpallist]

The 'hourly rate' is one way to look at it. Another (better?) way to look at it is from risk/reward PoV.

If you are a ticket scalper waiting 24 hours in line for, say, rolling stones tickets (or whatever the kids listen to these days), at fifty bucks a pop, you buy 12, and hope to sell them for $200 each. The upside, should you sell them, is a $1800 profit. However, the downside, should you NOT sell them is a $600 loss.

The worst case in the PS3 scenario is, what? Sony says 'just kidding!', gluts the market with consoles, and you sell your $600 PS3 for like $575. A loss of $25.

Sure, you lost your time, but the financial risk is much lower (barring robbery at bbgun-point and the like).

[bowler]

It gets better than that, kpallist. If they decide that they're not going to get enough for their time on eBay, they can possibly return the console depending on where they purchased it, providing they didn't open it, for at the least store credit if not a refund.