What the hell? (Part II)

[Jon Corby]

I won a £15 iTunes card in our works Xmas raffle yesterday, and as I never buy anything on iTunes I sold it to another woman here for a tenner. I then looked on eBay to see if people were selling them on there, and found one with a few hours left on auction for which the current bid was £14 (and there was 50p p&p). It seemed a bit unnecessary to me to go through the hassle of buying on eBay just to save 50p, but each to their own, and I do know some tight people who might think that made sense. On checking this morning though, the winning bid was actually £14.50. So including the 50p p&p they paid £15... for a £15 iTunes card. On eBay. So all the hassle and risk, for no saving.

Still in my period of bafflement, eBay informed me that I had missed this item as the auction had closed, but I might be interested in these similar items... and there's several vendors selling £15 iTunes cards for >£15 (up to £19.99) Buy It Now.

Eh? What am I missing here? Surely you only pay £15 for a £15 iTunes card from a supermarket, don't you?

Should I put the tenner I got for my card on eBay? How much could I get for it?

[Michael Wallace]

It's a bit weird, isn't it? I suppose one aspect of paying £15 for a £15 card on ebay is that you might not be able to get one online with free postage (or think that you can't, at least).

You do see some weird prices on ebay though, such as people bidding more for a computer game than it would cost to get from play. It just seems a bit more obvious with gift cards.

[Lesley Hines]

On ebay you can purchase a bar of Dove soap for a mere £1.25 + £1.50 P&P (sold in Tesco for 55p). Possibly the most disturbing one I saw though was a Rampant Rabbit that had been reduced to £25 from £40 - condition: Used.

[Charlie Reams]

At some point there was a price differential that made it profitable to buy iTunes cards in Hong Kong and resell them here, which seems odd for a cash-equivalent but a friend of mine made a few quid doing it. Not that this explains what you're seeing here, I guess. Maybe people just like having a Buy It Now price?