If I Were a Rich Man…

So I was doing some random web browsing this morning and found something I just had to mention ’cause it’s so amazingly ridiculous.

First off, I’m a big fan of the Mini Cooper, both old and new, and desperately lust after owning the new one. In the meantime, I’m starting up a nice little stockpile of toy Mini Coopers. I was wandering around eBay (I have a boatload of Simpsons too, but still not all of ’em) and discovered there are actually a couple of different versions of a Hot Wheels Mini Cooper that I’ve bought. I have a whole herd of yellow ones, but appraently there are some green ones out there. Plus, there are some green ones in the old Mini style.

One of these I found on eBay said “HotWheelsCollector.com” on the side, so I figured I’d go to the site and see what they had. First off, don’t go to the site. It’s clunky and horrible and you have to register in two or three separate places to get where you want to get.

So I finally get registered enough an get into the collector’s site. In it they have a news section, talking about all of these limited mail-ins and other offers that have expired. I clicked on one of ’em ’cause it had a really cool picture. This set was apparently some super-special limited edition.

They took the fifteen cars they released last year in a certain series and combined ’em with a plastic case and a certificate. The trick is, there were 500 available, number 1-500 of the release of like, 10,000. Also, all of the cars had the same serial number. So if your set was number 10, all of your cars would be number 10. Ready for the price? FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS!!!!! Plus, it was only available to people who pay them money for access to a special pay section of the site! Plus, they limited it to one set per customer.

That’s not the really stunning thing though. The news release stating that they were sold out said they went on sale at 9 AM PST and were sold out by 9:10 AM THE SAME DAY!!!! 500 people paid $400 apiece to buy ’em up in TEN MINUTES!!!!

I’m really starting to wonder about people. Don’t even get me started on that “Billionaire’s Toys” shows I saw a piece of last night. After the first 15 minutes I was too ill to finish watching it. Alls I know is, once I become a billionaire, I’m going to use my money to hunt down the billionaires that fritter the money away on all of that useless crap on the show and make ’em pay, Schwarzenegger-style. $100,000 Monopoly board, my ass. “Do not pass go, do not collect your teeth after I beat you senseless.”

Okay, so I need to work on my snappy Action Hero lines.