Xbox Series X mini-fridges officially became available for pre-orders earlier today but the entire stock was wiped clean within seconds before landing on several marketplaces for three times the retail price, courtesy of scalpers.
Xbox Series X mini-fridges carry a price tag of $100 and use a USB port to chill around a dozen cans. The real-life replica sold out within a few minutes after going live on Target earlier today. The number of purchasers continuously hitting the website even crashed the pre-order page. Target was quick to bring the page back online with a restock, but which sold out within seconds.
Unfortunately and rather unsurprisingly, a large number of those purchasers were scalpers. There are already several Xbox Series X mini-fridges listed on eBay and the going rate ranges between $250 to $350 after including shipping charges.
Seems like it was a hiccup with our partners at Target. Going live FOR REAL any second now!
— Xbox (@Xbox) October 19, 2021
Scalpers have been enjoying a feast as of late. They wiped out recurring restocks of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X (including Series S) consoles, as well as the new Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics cards and more.
A few months back, scalpers bypassed an anti-scalper queuing system on Steam to sell queue-spots of Steam Decks on eBay for inflated prices. Those Steam Deck listings began from over $1,000 and went as high as $3,500, even higher in some bizarre cases.
Thankfully, eBay took quick notice and removed all Steam Deck listings and even suspended the seller accounts as they had breached a pre-sale clause. It remains to be seen if eBay will take the same notice in the case of Xbox Series X mini-fridges as well.
Xbox Series X mini-fridges were born out of a meme when Microsoft revealed the looming monolithic design of its new next-generation Xbox console. Xbox marketing head Aaron Greenberg pushed the idea by promising fans a real-life Xbox Series X mini-fridge if they help Microsoft in winning a Twitter marketing poll at the time, which they did.
