Wisdom of the Crowds? iPod edition

I came across this thread today, which catalogs Apple enthusiasts' responses to the rumors of Apple's new product in 2001... the iPod. It's a fantastic read. Some choice predictions from the first few pages:

1. hey - heres an idea Apple - rather than enter the world of gimmicks and toys, why dont you spend a little more time sorting out your pathetically expensive and crap server line up? or are you really aiming to become a glorified consumer gimmicks firm?
2. I still can't believe this! All this hype for something so ridiculous! Who cares about an MP3 player? I want something new! I want them to think differently!Why oh why would they do this?! It's so wrong! It's so stupid!
3. gee! an mp3 player with a HD! how original! kinda reminds me of a JUKEBOX i once knew..
4. There are already two products similar to this on the market. The Nomad Jukebox and the Archos Jukebox which can come with a 20 gig HD. The iPod is obviously alot cooler and has firewire, but it is far from revolutionary. I for one am disappointed and think that apple is making a mistake by trying to get into this market.
5. This Christmas you will see mp3 players be commoditized. Meaning that the players from Korea will be way less expensive tha iPod. The real money is in DRM and distribution (ala Real Musicnet). If Apple were smart they would be focusing on high gross revenue from services rather than a playback device.

Not everyone was down on it, though. Here's some comments with people with better foresight, or just more faith in Apple:

1. We live in the YEAR 2001... not 6000 years from now when ridiculously awsome technology will exist. No other mp3 player has a harddrive like this... 5gigs... **** yeah. A rio of the same size offers 64megs. Jesum Crow, get over your moping.. .this is revolutionary.... plus it's just the beggining. This device litterally bests anything on the market by about 100x
2. 5GB in a little tiny thing like that, it's amazing. I don't see anyone else making something like that. Do you?
3. As long as apple markets it effectively, I think it's gonna do really well.
4. This thing's too cool. It makes my Rio 500 (recently upgraded to hold 128 MB of songs) look pathetic. It's beautiful. It looks too easy to use. It has all sorts of cool features that I will never live without again. This is a home run

Note that Apple stock was trading at $8/share in October 2001, at the time of the thread and the iPod release, and is currently at $89/share. I wonder if anyone above put there money where their mouths were...

Buying Gift Cards

Over at the Freakonomics blog, there's the normal cyptic preview of their upcoming NY Times Magazine piece, including a link to some background research. Included in that is an excel spreadsheet with recent ebay auctions in which gift cards were sold (.xls), which I found fascinating. Some stats:

• The average gift card included (there are 100), sold for a total cost (price + shipping) equal to 87.2% of the face value of the gift card. (The average card had a $200 value, though it varies greatly by store.)
• Of course, there's quite a range there as well. The least successful sale (62.1%) was for a $2.09 Macy's card. (There's also a $436 Pottery Barn card that went at 64.2%, so it's not just a small number thing.)
• Four cards went for more than the face value of the card. The "winners" are a $25 Old Navy card that went for a total cost of $26, and a $50 Wal-Mart card that went for $52. Two others went at 100%
• There's very little correlation (.09) between the feedback of the seller and the percentage of face value that the card went for, and also very little correlation (-.06) between the size of the card and the percentage of face value it sold at, though bigger cards did tend to fetch a lower %.