I thought it was really weird when Apple continued to sell the original HomePod for $ 299 months after it was discontinued. But now it makes sense – not only are some people still willing to pay a premium for a somewhat smart speaker, they are willing to pay more than Apple charges for it.
We looked at eBay sales after noticing the tweet of 9to5Mac editor-in-chief Chance Miller and soon discovered that it wasn’t just a joke: the average Apple HomePod cost $ 375 last week. That’s 25 percent more than Apple charged.
Of course, some HomePods cost more than others – a used speaker without a box can only bring you $ 220 before eBay charges, but we’ve seen a few factory-sealed unrepaired HomePods sell for over $ 500. In fact, some retailers boast that they’ve forced Apple to replace their old HomePods with brand new devices just to turn them around.
When I filtered expensive deviations in a sealed box, the average selling price was more than $ 350 last week. That’s still $ 50 more than brand new ones!
Keep in mind that prices may fall if Verge readers flood the market. EBay screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge
That’s fine, but you can see in the chart on eBay above that the value of the HomePod has been rising in the last year since it was discontinued. This is virtually unheard of for gadgets like these, except for scalping situations, such as we recently saw with consoles and GPUs.
Why HomePod? This is a good question. Maybe that’s part of Apple’s story; you need two of them for stereo or more for audio throughout the house; and unlike its more affordable successor, the HomePod Mini, it’s acoustically pretty good. My colleague Jen Tuohi also explained that the smart home is one of the few places where Siri actually stands out. She believes that people realize that this is the only other option than the HomePod Mini, which sounds worse.
So for now, this is a working theory.
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