The Wii's Are Away
Ahhh Thanksgiving is upon us once again. That means it's time for craziness.
My grandfather is in town for the week and I always wonder if he's bored out of his mind when he's here. The rest of us are always so flipping busy around the holidays so it seems sometimes that maybe we ignore the relatives when they're here, but my grandpa seems entertained. He's a simple guy- Likes his newspaper and books and football on TV. I just hope he doesn't get the impression that I've been avoiding him or anything.
So in my last entry, I told the tale of how iturtle and I stood in line overnight Sunday morning to be the first to own Nintendo's new video game console, the "Wii". We each paid $250 for our own consoles with the hopes of immediately turning around and selling them on eBay for twice what we paid since the Wii sold out everywhere and the only way to get it was on eBay. So how'd we do? Both consoles are now sold and out the door and we ended up selling both of them for only around $330 each. That's well below our original estimates of $400 each, but we've realized that the market immediately fell apart and we are lucky we made a profit at all.
See, a week ago when Sony's Playstation 3 came out, they only had 100,000 to sell for the whole planet. Demand was unreal, so people were selling them on eBay for $3,000+. Many expected the Wii to be the same, but Nintendo had well over a million ready to go on Sunday. There was more than enough to go around so demand was way lower than with the PS3. More Wii's to buy meant more Wii's to put on eBay, and sure enough, 30,000 Wii's appeared on eBay all at the same time. The market imploded and died as prices immediately dropped below $400 and continued to fall. Today, I saw one go for $200. That's $50 below retail. Truly, we're very lucky we actually made a profit off these things. After auction fees, we're turning a net profit of $65 on each console. It's not nearly as much as I had hoped, but it's $65 that wasn't in my pocket a week ago and it'll make that camcorder so much easier to buy.
Black Friday, my friends. It is here. It is tomorrow. I will have that camcorder. As they say in Wayne's World, "Ohh yes, it will be mine." More specifically, it's the Samsung SC-D363 MiniDV Camcorder at Best Buy. It shoots in widescreen, has a port for an external microphone and it uses some of the gear I bought for my brother's less functional camera. Right now it's $250 but on Friday morning it will be $130. Best Buy opens at 5 AM, so you'll see me in line around midnight. Bring your umbrella, it looks like rain. Man, it's gonna be a crazy night.
My grandfather is in town for the week and I always wonder if he's bored out of his mind when he's here. The rest of us are always so flipping busy around the holidays so it seems sometimes that maybe we ignore the relatives when they're here, but my grandpa seems entertained. He's a simple guy- Likes his newspaper and books and football on TV. I just hope he doesn't get the impression that I've been avoiding him or anything.
So in my last entry, I told the tale of how iturtle and I stood in line overnight Sunday morning to be the first to own Nintendo's new video game console, the "Wii". We each paid $250 for our own consoles with the hopes of immediately turning around and selling them on eBay for twice what we paid since the Wii sold out everywhere and the only way to get it was on eBay. So how'd we do? Both consoles are now sold and out the door and we ended up selling both of them for only around $330 each. That's well below our original estimates of $400 each, but we've realized that the market immediately fell apart and we are lucky we made a profit at all.
See, a week ago when Sony's Playstation 3 came out, they only had 100,000 to sell for the whole planet. Demand was unreal, so people were selling them on eBay for $3,000+. Many expected the Wii to be the same, but Nintendo had well over a million ready to go on Sunday. There was more than enough to go around so demand was way lower than with the PS3. More Wii's to buy meant more Wii's to put on eBay, and sure enough, 30,000 Wii's appeared on eBay all at the same time. The market imploded and died as prices immediately dropped below $400 and continued to fall. Today, I saw one go for $200. That's $50 below retail. Truly, we're very lucky we actually made a profit off these things. After auction fees, we're turning a net profit of $65 on each console. It's not nearly as much as I had hoped, but it's $65 that wasn't in my pocket a week ago and it'll make that camcorder so much easier to buy.
Black Friday, my friends. It is here. It is tomorrow. I will have that camcorder. As they say in Wayne's World, "Ohh yes, it will be mine." More specifically, it's the Samsung SC-D363 MiniDV Camcorder at Best Buy. It shoots in widescreen, has a port for an external microphone and it uses some of the gear I bought for my brother's less functional camera. Right now it's $250 but on Friday morning it will be $130. Best Buy opens at 5 AM, so you'll see me in line around midnight. Bring your umbrella, it looks like rain. Man, it's gonna be a crazy night.