It’s Basic Economics

I believe I’ve mentioned before that I pre-ordered a couple copies of the new World of Warcraft expansion, Burning Crusade.  I did this not with the intent of using all of them, but instead making a profit off the limited availability and high demand of such an item.  The original Collector’s Edition still goes for hundreds of dollars on Ebay.

The days leading up to the release of Burning Crusade, there were many Ebay auctions posting pre-orders of the CE version of the expansion for double the cost.  I figured my gambling was safe.  Here we are a few weeks after the release, I have all my copies (2 of which I plan on re-selling) and taking a look at ebay, it appears the market has been flooded. Copies aren’t even selling for more than their purchase value.  I’m somewhat shocked.  I guess a lot more people had the same idea that I did, and were able to get their grubby hands on multiple copies for re-sale.  I’m sure the supply will go down as time goes on, but I’d be curious to see if Blizzard made more copies of the Collector’s Edition available due to the high demand of the previous version and increase in user base.  It turns out my initial double money back guarantee, has turned into somewhat of a stock risk, where I have to wait and see how the market pans out, and sell at the most opportune moment.

I’ve been running a “less than legit” version of Vista retail for a while now, but that will soon change.  I have a free version coming from a promotion put on by Microsoft, that I’ll pay to upgrade to the Ultimate version.  This will go on my main machine.  Then I have 2 other copies of Home Premium, that I purchased at a reduced price using my Beta Key with Microsoft’s Family Pack offer.  One will go on my laptop, and the other, I’ll just hang onto for a while I guess.  With the Ultimate upgrade I should have the option to purchase 2 more copies at a reduced rate, but we’ll see what comes of that.  It’s kind of interesting, I really didn’t have the intent of having a legit version of Vista on my machine until I could find a good deal.  But, when free and super cheap options came along, it just worked out.  I’ll do a write up on my impressions of the retail version of Vista sometime down the road.  Most of which will be highlighting my joy of Media Center.