Don't Believe The PS3 eBay Hype @ PS3News

When it comes to reports of PS3 prices on eBay, it would be wise for everybody to take a few steps back and take a healthy chew on a reality pill.

The news is flooded with stories of PlayStation 3 consoles selling for $9000, $10,000, $15,000, partially used kidneys, etc. There's just one fact that people are forgetting: most of the those sellers will never, ever get paid.

A quick check of eBay's completed PS3 auctions sorted from high to low quickly proves the point. We'll ignore the 99 million dollar completed auction, since that one is clearly just a prankster. But it's actually no different from the others that sold for less.

The next highest auctions that have finished are seven auctions that closed at prices between $10,100 and $44,100. The winners of these eight auctions are:
intellectguy777( 2 ), imcken32( 25), imcken32 (25), imcken32 (25), jordankickz510( 0 ), jswank973 (30), acj2121( 0 ), and imcken32 (25).

Does anybody honestly believe that these people are going to pay? intellectguy777 has a feedback rating of two and hasn't won an auction since January. Four of the winners are the same person: imcken32. The odds of a person winning 4 different auctions and paying over $40,000 is about the odds of Borat winning Best Picture at the Oscars. Besides, this user hasn't even won a single item since 2004.

Next up is jordankickz510, who has a whopping feedback of zero. But don't let that part fool you into thinking that they haven't participated on the site already. No, they already have a negative feedback stating "no payment, no communication, never do business with."

Getting towards the end, we've got jswank973, who has a seemingly respectable rating of 30. Except that they've gotten four negatives out of 40 transactions, leaving them with a positive feedback of 89.5%. Trust me, in the land of eBay, that's truly hideous feedback. Ken Lay probably would have at least a 92%.

And lastly, poor acj2121 has a rating of zero, and has already been booted off eBay. No soup for him.

That's every auction that's gone over $10,000 so far. If you go below that, the majority of auctions ending for a seemingly obscene price are people with little to no feedback, people who haven't been on eBay since Brokeback Mountain was released, and the perpetually bidding imcken32.

Are there legitimate auctions for PlayStation 3 that are going for over $2500? Yes, indeedy. And that's insane enough without having to address closed sales that are quite obviously the result of twitchy outcasts with nothing better to do than wreak havoc on the system.