The Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional’s eBay costs are making me unhappy

I paid some huge cash for the privilege of getting an Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional brand-new in February. All-in, with optical inserts and taxes, I financed a little bit over $3,900 for the 256GB model of the headset. A day or so in the past, I made a mistake that I’m positive many early adopters are aware of: I appeared up how a lot it’s been promoting for on eBay.

On Wednesday, a 1TB Imaginative and prescient Professional, full with all of the included gear, Apple’s fluffy $200 journey case, $500 AppleCare Plus, and claimed to have been “worn perhaps about an hour” offered for $3,200 after 21 bids. The listed delivery estimate was $20.30. Model new, that mixture is $5,007.03 on Apple’s web site for me. One other eBay itemizing, this one with my headset’s configuration (however sans optical inserts) went for simply $2,600 — once more with most, if not all, of the included equipment. A number of different 256GB and 512GB fashions offered for round that quantity this week.

This, in fact, is how the story goes for early adopters, particularly if you’re shopping for very costly tech earlier than the mainstream catches on. Apple’s pricing doesn’t assist issues, particularly when the subsequent closest competing headset — the Meta Quest 3 — is simply $500. It’s a bummer even when they’re finally not all that comparable, not less than by way of their focused audiences and objectives for his or her platforms.

However it nonetheless stings, doesn’t it? Figuring out I might have saved a number of hundred {dollars} and gotten the best storage configuration, AppleCare Plus, and a storage case is especially painful. I just like the Imaginative and prescient Professional loads — perhaps greater than every other author at The Verge — but when I hadn’t missed the return window, I might ship mine proper again to Apple in a heartbeat simply so I might get one in every of these offers. Fortunately, after I’m sporting the headset, no person can see my tears.