Was a Playstation Stolen at Gunpoint - in Charlotte? »
The Charlotte Observer is reporting this morning that Friday at about 8:30am, after waiting two days in line, a man purchased a Playstation 3 console, only to return home, and as he unlocked his front door, was robbed - by shotgun - of his new purchase. Maybe I'm turning into a cynic, but so many things about this don't sit well with me that I almost don't know where to begin.
For starters, I don't get why people can't wait a few weeks until the units are widely available.
I'm having a problem understanding why anyone would want to spend the $500-600 on the PS3 in the first place - much less why anyone else would spend up to $3000 on eBay. So let's just say I'm already on the outside looking in.
Follow that up with the fact that the victim in this crime was planning to sell his console on eBay. On the low end, he can expect to command perhaps $1000 - with the sheer number of units becoming available by auction (nearly twenty-six thousand this morning), it would be unusual to expect to get the higher end of earlier estimates.
If he paid $500-600, and can expect to get maybe $1000, after fees, he may clear $300-400. Tops. So this guy waited for two days to earn a little more than $8 per hour? That's a horrible return on investment. I'm thinking that we're probably not talking the brightest bulb in the pack already. I may not understand, but at least a video game devotee, I can respect. These folks are just trying to make a buck and not realizing what sort of return they are getting.
So then someone just happens to notice he has a Playstation 3 and robs him before he gets inside? Or was he just in the wrong place at the wrong time? The only other option is that the person behind the shotgun followed him home from the Best Buy and robbed him when no one was around. Perhaps believable, and certainly something I can buy more than wanting to think that today's youth are so bad at math that they will sit outside a store for two days to make eight bucks an hour.
At least the thief will do better than that - a few minutes work and he'll clear that easy (though you have to wonder if such a criminal has access to eBay). The same report mentions that people listing PS3 auctions on eBay had to pull them because of a shortage of available consoles.
Maybe this guy who ripped off the unlucky would-be opportunist was simply a regular eBay auctioneer who didn't want to see his feedback rating jeopardized by not being able to deliver the goods. Or maybe I'm just getting too old to understand the world in which we live.
