I've made a bit of money selling hard to find consumer electronics, including iPhones, at a premium. I must of made $1000 in profit on Wiis in one month via eBay.
If someone is stupid enough to buy an item above MSRP because they are impatient, then there is someone smart enough to make that money. Simple supply and demand.
Well, the very reason some of these items are "hard to find" in the first place is actually BECAUSE so many of them are being snatched up by the armload by people who only are interested in reselling them. If everyone in that Chinese store only purchased one or two, many of the folks in the pic would have probably gone home happy. Scalpers sure wrecked that in a hurry. The People's Republic of Capitalism, indeed. Hard to believe Apple didn't see this one coming.
Years ago, I used to go to fundraiser book sales and estate sales looking for affordable art books until eventually it just basically got destroyed by dealers looking to make a buck. You could tell who they were because they were ALWAYS, ALWAYS first in line, looked really mean and nervous, and they had big cardboard boxes in both hands and a blanket over their shoulder. When the gate was opened, these asshats would literally RUN to the table of valuable art books and snatch up everything remotely interesting or valuable and literally dump them by the armload into cardboard boxes, shove them in a corner and throw a blanket over the pile, signifying it was "theirs". One guy I particularly liked to watch literally would shake, he would get so excited. Later, after a good pillaging anything else of value, these guys would go over to the corner and like a lion with a chunk of meat turn their backs and pore thru everything to actually look at what they got. After 20 minutes or so, they'd dump off the junk- damaged books and non-first editions for the poor suckers like me that just wanted a good book or two.
A couple weeks later those 25 cent art books showed up in the neighborhood book store for 79.95.... now conveniently out of my price range. Thanks!
Now you can see these guys at estate sales..... same techniques, only now they're using iphones to look up the value of everything they have in their piles. What a godsend for them.
On some level, this same crap started happening in real estate the last 5 or 10 years.... everyone became a part-time speculator looking to make a buck on something underpriced. Pretty much took care of anything even remotely a good deal. Thanks! Just imagine if everyone did this on everything........
But I must say, I agree with you on some level- people are stupid for NEEDING to buy frivolous fad items the day they come out. If they're foolish enough to demand it immediately, its gonna cost them, one way or another. Apple will make millions more, soon enough. WTF is the rush?