The Richter Scale^®

eBay has been interesting to explore this week as all sorts of goodies from
E3 are finding their way on-line.

E3 Show Directories and Show Daily publications are selling for $3.99 and up.

Paper bags, available at the LA Convention Center by the thousands are being offered for as little as 99 cents apiece. Xbox water bottles and buttons are going for a similar amount.

But what has really taken eBay by storm are the so-called Limited Edition Xbox 360 Face Plates. There are dozens of these being offered, and almost all have bids on them starting around $100 and going on up to well over $200.

This is what these face plates look like:

Part of the Xbox 360 design is the ability to customize the look of the box, and that’s done by replacing the face plates. To commemorate the press launch of the Xbox 360 this past Monday, Microsoft created a limited edition, 5000 piece, numbered, E3’05 face plate for the Xbox 360. Everyone who attended the press briefing on Monday the 16th of May, got a little
card which could be exchanged for a face plate upon exit. Extra cards were available to those who lost theirs.

I ultimately ended up with three of the face plates (and no, I have no intention of selling them), as a result of friends who didn’t care for theirs. But here’s the point - there are apparently quite a number of enterprising media event attendees who are looking to profit directly from their participation in the Xbox 360 launch by selling their free swag to the
highest bidder. I can only hope that none of the people doing the selling are members of the press, although based on what I saw during the week of media attendees, I have my doubts…

At the current valuations per eBay bids (and I assume they will go way up in value once the Xbox 360 ships), these face plates, the whole load of 5000 of them, could be worth at a half a million dollars or more on the open market. That’s staggering, especially for something that’s just so much vapor at the moment. On the flip side, limited editions are meant to
be special and collectible. It’s just that I would rather at least see some charity at least partially benefit from the desire of people to spend money on these face plates than seeing individuals lining just their pockets.