Snapchat Spectacles are going for hundreds of dollars on eBay
Snapchat’s Spectacles, a pair of $130 camera-equipped sunglasses that sync with your smartphone, went on sale this morning from a bright yellow pop-up vending machine that first showed up near the company’s Venice Beach headquarters. Now, after selling out in fast fashion, the glasses are showing up on eBay for as much as $950. Many of the pairs are available for between $300 and $500, yet those pairs are moving quickly up the price ladder as more bids pour in. Not everyone is trying to milk eager fans for all their worth. One listing is offering five pairs, and it’s only at $760 with 86 bids so far.
Spectacles, which are Snapchat’s low-cost take on Google Glass, are designed less as a way to broadcast every waking moment of your life and more as a neat and fun accessory to take out in social situations. The idea is to let people use a discrete, hands-free version of Snapchat at parties and other places you’d normally see people taking out their phones. The glasses allow you to press a button to record 30-second snippets of video that are then sent directly to the Snapchat mobile app.
The vending machine, which Snapchat is called a “Snapbot,” will show up at a different location each day, the company says. Snapchat isn’t telling consumers where and when the Snapbot will show up, instead opting to post the location online as a surprise. Of course, this is all a bit of a marketing stunt. Snapchat wants to gauge demand, so it’s purposefully restricting supply to see how interested its user base is in a $130 pair of camera glasses. Given the huge lines at Snapchat’s first Snapbot this morning, it’s safe to say the company may have a hit on its hands.
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