I posted some pics of my finished nursery (for baby #2, due in 3 weeks) on a pregnancy message board, and one of the girls there said she loved my mobile but can’t afford it–it’s really expensive because they don’t make it anymore. She included an Amazon link and I about crapped myself: it’s $188.99. What the FUCK?
I bought it new for my first son about 4 years ago for $40 at Target. Yes, it’s gaudy and ugly, but it was far more interesting for my son to look at as a newborn than the bland pastel thing that matched his crib set. I loved that mobile as it enabled me to shower (with the monitor on high so I could hear it in the bathroom, of course), brush my teeth, or otherwise get 15min for personal care during those blurry early weeks. I made sure to keep it should there be a baby #2.
But–$200?! Are they INSANE? I don’t get it–there are other mobiles by this company still being made, and Ebay has this very mobile in the $70 range (still obnoxious, if you ask me, but it’s NOT in the $200-are-you-out-of-your-mind range).
Hubby of course is all about Ebaying this sucker once baby #2 outgrows it, though I don’t see any used ones fetching obnoxious prices.
Yeah, I saw the Ebay thing…but, it’s not just Bockner’s Bazaar–this link shows the price ranges from $188.99 to $199.99 from multiple sellers: KidsKraze, ToyTime, SweetPea’s Treasures, and Outside the Toybox.
That makes it even more WTF to me. And really–$200 for a MOBILE? W-T-freakin’-F?
Hah I have this one too, since baby #2 just finished using it. We bought it in 2006 and I have it packed up to go the local shelter for homeless pregnant women and/or homeless women and children. That’s in-freaking sane, $200? Although it kept #1 DD occupied for HOURS, and #2 could have cared less about it.
Well crap, we had that mobile for our daughter, we got it at Target for $40 in 06. We just sold it at a yard sale for $5. Had I known it went for anything near that price I would have kept it. It was a nice mobile though, the only one that I found that would play music and not have it turn, or maybe the other way around. She really liked it and kept it on her bed so she could turn it on and off until this spring.
We bought our camera about a year and a half ago from newegg for around $250, and got a great package with it: memory card, case, all that fun stuff. A few months ago, I check again, and the same camera is selling for $500 or more. This seems especially weird to me, since electronics don’t generally get better as they get older and get replaced by new models with snappy features.
This is quite common, actually. Usually only the newest models of camera are available at cheap prices, and the older ones are actually more expensive. It seems counterintuitive, but, really, it’s just that the market is so low-volume that the prices are distorted.
I believe what’s happening here is that once the stock runs low, the few remaining sellers will jack their prices up in the hopes of snagging the uneducated and not-price-discriminatory market. There are bound to be people who see your new camera and write down the exact model number, or who look for that particular mobile, and don’t have any idea what the price should be, so they’ll buy it at the expensive price. It’s fairly cheap to keep a listing on Amazon and other such sites, and making a few sales at a great profit margin is worth keeping a few outdated models in stock (probably purchased dirt-cheap as remainders when the new models came in)
Note that the prices that things actually go for on eBay are much lower. The value of the camera is not actually that high, but when there’s only one seller on Amazon, they might just ask for the moon and get it.