Would you pay $10,000 for a video card?!

I'm leaning toward thinking this is a "marketing" ploy by XFX to create attention and hype/mystery around their card. Here's a copy of the newsletter I received from them.

Note the link at the very bottom which I've pasted there...
It's not very visible in the newsletter as it's only when you click on the word "here" in the last sentence that you get that link...and in the newsletter the font for that last sentence is MUCH smaller than the rest of the text and is bellow an image at the very bottom of the page.



INSIDE THIS ISSUE |

CONFIDENTIAL
MATERIALS ENCLOSED






Dear XFX Customers,

In light of recent events, we have come to suspect that one of our 5970 Black Edition Limited cards may have been compromised. In our current inventory check of this limited run of 1,000 individually serialized pieces, #68 has been unaccounted for. Due to evidence of a security breach in our facility, we believe it to have been illegally obtained as the product has yet been released per the embargo date. Please be aware that the person responsible will be subject to persecution by law. If any news can be provided to lead us to the apprehension of the suspect, or you can provide us with any information, please report it to security@xfxforce.com. Please do not attempt to buy, trade, or barter for this unit. We thank you for your cooperation and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Sincerely,
XFX



This is an XFX Gamertainment Campaign. P lease refer here for more information.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=gamertainment
 
Joined
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That may be so, but the actual Ebay auction is real. If you look at the bottom of the auction page, it says….


Excerpt from official XFX Newsletter regarding this eBay listing:

The item listing of Product #68 eBay is a valid auction. The winning bid is a binding contract and the winner will be committed to purchasing the item. This particular card will be a fully warranted product from XFX. In addition, this highly collectible merchandise comes with the wooden crate featured in the videos and signed by the XFX girls and cast of the promotion.

Please serious bidders only.
 
Joined
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That does sound a bit pricey. Even the best professional graphics cards only cost five grand or so.

Then again, somebody did by the iRich application for the iPhone, for a grand -- and all that did was display a honkin' big ruby on the phone screen...
 
Joined
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If you look at the biding history on the E=bay site, it appeares that the same person is bidding against themselves, driving the price up. Strange? Maybe I just don't know how to read it properly.
 
Joined
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Yeah, that biding history is VERY suspect. Many of the bids have been retracted. There's even one for $1M. Marketing ploy / hype with perhaps the hope of luring a poor sucker into falling for it... LOL, but sad...
 
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There's nothing suspect about it at all, people retract bids on Ebay all the time, especially for high priced items.

You can only retract a certain amount of bids before getting a warning from Ebay though. If you continue to do it, you eventually get banned for a time.
 
Joined
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The bidding obviously got out of hand, probably a lot of young guys trying to one-up each other, and ending up just getting stupid.

The auction itself is 100% legit though.
 
Joined
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Right... except that's known as "price shilling" on Ebay, and it's illegal. I'm pretty sure those are legitimate bidders.

Now whether or not the winning bidder actually pays for it is another matter altogether...
 
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