If any of you seriously think that the iPad or any device costs half of the retail price, your a child. If the ipad costs $500 at retail, you can be assured that it costs apple less than $100. Just like all these stupid clips about oh Microsoft and Sony lose money with every console they sell and they make it back in game sales, no, if someone presented that idea to sony or microsoft they'd have been fired that day on the spot for having a stupid idea. Why would any mfg tell the consumer the C2G (cost 2 goods) they don't and won't because that is proprietary info. Marshalls/TJMaxx buy overstock and excess from mfgs/distributors, so if they're selling the iPad for $400 they paid less then $200 per device, no business is going to buy something and sell it for a loss, otherwise next year their'd be no business to sell anything. They are not an authorized reseller of anything so they don't have to comply with anyone in terms of setting price. An example, Reebok NFL sweatshirt is $80 at full price from Reebok, Marshalls has the same one for $30, Marshalls didn't pay $80 or $50 or $30, they paid between $5-8 so when they sell it for $30 they're making 5-6 times what they paid for it. This is how businesses run, 99.9% of all products are marked up in the 4 matrixes, so 4,8,12,16,20. So with them having a $400 iPad they more than likely bought 10000+ ipads from one of the distributors who are no longer looking to carry the iPad, so in essence Costco just dropped the iPad, TJMAXX bought the left overs at what ever price because Costco will just write it off as a loss, so they lose no money. This is why TJMAXX/Marshalls are still around for the last 20 years.