iPhone Pre-Sale Major Premiums on eBay (AAPL, EBAY)

Since the Apple (AAPL-NASDAQ) iPhone has been given the actually release date of June 29, 2007, it looks like the eBay (EBAY-NASDAQ) auction scalping is back on.  Keep in mind that despite the actual release and ship dates, this is really no different than the auction being a ‘short sale’ with the key difference being an iPhone rather than shares of a stock.  The retail prices exclusively through AT&T (T-NYSE) on a first come first serve basis are 4GB at $499.00 or 8GB  for $599.00.

Two different auctions ending this evening already have a premium to the pricing with more than 12 hours to go.  These are pre-sale items, both are the 8GB versions.  One is already at $660.00 with 29 bids and another is at $610.00 with 18 bids.

What is perhaps more interesting (actually funny or ludicrous) than the iPhone scalping is the raw number of web domain name auctions that are pending.  One such auction has a minimum $1,000.00 indication and a BUY IT NOW feature price of $29,999.00 for ’27 premium iPhone domain names.’  If you look up the domain names you may have some questions as to who would want them, because none of the domain names are "Why didn’t I think of that domain name?" web addresses that consumers would just randomly type in to see what iPhone services are out there.  This auction ends on Thursday June 7, 2007, and has no bids.

The domain name ‘apple-iphone2007.com’ did sell for $305.00 (Auction number 140120996252) on June 1, 2007 on eBay.  There was also an 8GB iPhone that sold for $99.00 (Auction number 330124992229).  There is always a premium on demand to supply for major limited release products.  But at what point does greed versus fear actually become crazy?

Jon C. Ogg
June 4, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.