Funny Business

SQUAWK BOX VIDEO

A look at what's likely to happen at the registers once the doors open on Friday, with Richard Hastings, Global Hunters Securities; Richard Jaffe, Stifel Nicolaus & Co. and CNBC's Jane Wells.

Black Friday: Bargain or Bust?

5 hrs ago

Whether the deals are better than what shoppers will usually see or if it is just another marketing tactic, with Hitha Prabhakar, Style File Group; Brad Wilson, BlackFriday2009.com and CNBC's Jane Wells.

Holiday Central 6 hrs ago
A discussion of the many ways retailers are preparing for Black Friday, live from K-Mart in Burbank, CA, with CNBC's Jane Wells.
Retailers Getting Ready for Black Friday 12 hrs ago
Retailers are getting ready for Black Friday, and CNBC's Jane Wells has the play by play. Stacy Janiak, of Deloitte, shares her insight.

Amazon vs. Wal-Mart

24 Nov 2009

What began as a price war between Wal-Mart and Amazon over a handful of books has nos spread to a wide assortment of consumer goods. Lee Eisenberg, a noted retail expert and consumer behaviorist, and CNBC's Jane Wells discuss.

Prices to Be Thankful For 24 Nov 2009
A decrease in food prices is something to be thankful for this holiday, reports CNBC's Jane Wells.

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CNBC ON DIGG

Whatever Happened to The Sarah Palin XBox?

Published: Tuesday, 20 Oct 2009 | 12:05 PM ET

Text Size

By: Jane Wells
CNBC Correspondent

Xbox autographed by Sarah Palin
Source: ebay.com

It finally listed. It didn't sell.

In a shocking development, no bids came through for the $1.1 million Microsoft [MSFT Loading... () ] Xbox autographed by Sarah Palin.

As readers may recall, Canadian David Morrill has been trying for months to sell the Xbox signed by the "rogue" Alaskan days before she announced her surprise resignation as Governor.

After repeated de-listings by Ebay, Morrill succeeded in putting up the Xbox for an auction which ended last week.

It didn't sell. But this story isn't over. "The item does provoke a very intense response from the public," Morrill tells me. "The reaction on blogs and message boards has been very heated and I have an inbox filled with hate mail, or people telling me how much they laughed."

Morrill says when he first listed the Xbox in August, "I wasn't intending to get much attention at all, and I was just hoping to have a valuable souvenir if Palin ever ran in 2012. Since you work for CNBC, you are very familiar with the idea of a hedge." Not sure how you list an Xbox for $1.1 million and not expect attention!

Slideshow: Top 10 Video Games for 2010

But is Morrill a Palin supporter? Hardly. "I love Obama, and he needs to be president for two terms," he says. "If he fails to stay president, he most likely will fail to Palin--what a horrible future!--and the value of my item will go up. This way if Obama wins, we all win, if Palin wins, I still win. I intend to keep listing it up to, and beyond, 2012, or until eBay finds another reason to take it down."

Morrill says that despite the hate mail, it's been an amazing experience. "I live on a farm in northern Alberta, I don't get thrills like this very often." But he says the experience taught him a lot about Ebay [EBAY Loading... () ]. "Every time (the Xbox) grabbed large scale attention, Ebay would come up with another reason to take it down--Conan O'Brien even made a joke about it!" he says. "The worst was telling me that PayPal couldn't process that large of a transaction. As anyone with a computer can tell you, PayPal handles transactions through eBay much larger than my own. They even threatened to take it down a fourth time if I didn't erase the record of what they had required me to do in order to list it."