By Lee Champion
With Christmas shopping, timing is everything and the way the hottest item this season is selling, timing really is everything.
One year it was Tickle-Me-Elmo, another it was the Furby. So what is burning up the shelves in Christmas 2000?
Video games. More specifically, a new video game system called Sony Playstation 2.
The Sony Playstation 2 has now been in the U.S. market since Nov. 26th, and currently cannot be found in any store. It is sold out everywhere and to find one, a shopper has to keep his or her eyes constantly open as well as being patient.
Amazon.com has received three shipments since Playstation 2 arrived. All three shipments sold out within 5 minutes, with the first selling out in 30 seconds, according to the Web site.
There is even a Playstation 2 news watch on the video game page that has updates as to when the next shipment will come in.
Suggested retail price for the system is $299, if found. Playstation 2’s can be located on online auctions but for a higher price, and some desperate people are willing to pay that price.
On e-Bay, the prices range from $500 to $1,200. On Excite auctions, the bidding prices began at $350.
One bidder actually bid $10,571 for the video-game system on Excite auctions.
Bryan Durrant, a supervisor at Toys-R-Us in Orem, said that every day they have customers come in asking for the Playstation 2.
The same customers come in every day because the store does not know when the Playstation 2 shipments will come, he said.
So far Toys-R-Us has received three shipments and each of them has sold out in 30 to 45 minutes, Durrant said.
Jeremy Cuellar, 22, a junior from Danville, Calif., majoring in psychology, waited in line from 7 a.m. to midnight the following day, outside of the Orem Wal-Mart to be one of the first to have the Playstation 2, he said.
“There were only 18 systems and they went to the first 18 that were in line,” Cuellar said.
People would try to get in the line after it was full, so the 18 of us became a team to protect our future Playstation 2 and our spots in line, he said.
“Wal-Mart would come out every hour to check on us and make sure we were still there, and if we weren’t, we lost our place in line, meaning we lost our Playstation 2,” Cuellar said.
The hunt for Playstation 2 is on, but only time will tell whose letters Santa will be able to answer.
