Product Hub June 22, 2017
Ill-Fated Fyre Festival Merch Sells For “Big” Money On eBay
In the pantheon of ginormous disasters, there are a few standouts. The great Biblical Flood. The purported asteroid strike that wiped out the dinosaurs. And, of course, this spring’s shambolic Fyre Festival.
For the unfamiliar, Fyre Festival was supposed to be a super-fantastic luxury music festival in the Bahamas to promote the Fyre music booking app. It turned out to be a train wreck inside a plane crash amid a tornado. Problems with security, food, accommodations, artist relations and more all combined to sandbag the festival before it could start, even after some would-be revelers started to arrive.
Still, disappointed partiers didn’t go home empty-handed.
Nope, they received Fyre-branded merchandise – items like hats, clothing and power banks. And, in the time-honored tradition of trying to turn a frown upside down with the help of money, some went capitalist and began selling the merch on eBay.
Who would actually buy the stuff, though, right?
Apparently, more than a few folks – drawn perhaps by the same it’s-so-terrible-it’s-cool appeal reserved for campy B-Movies and Millennial fashion trends (see RompHims).
One Fyre dad hat sold for $74. Another was on sale for $40.
Meanwhile, an eBayer raked in $56 for a Fyre-branded power bank, while another seller nabbed $71 for what was supposedly an artist’s pass.
Perhaps most eye-poppingly, one cocksure C2C entrepreneur tried slinging a Fyre sweatshirt for $300 (hahaha, for real). “Want a piece of the history?” the would-be seller asked. “This hoody is awesome. It was part of the official merchandise store at Fyre festival in the Bahamas, and the greatest festival disaster in the history of music festivals.”
Apparently, tragicomic novelty appeal has its limitations: No one was willing to drop $300 on the sweatshirt. Had it been for $20 or less, we (ashamedly) would have been all in.
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