Sunday, December 28, 2014

The Grumpy Cat calendar caper.

Who knew a brain fart would turn out to be so expensive?

Several weeks ago, while my daughters and I were killing time in a card shop after dinner out, Amy stopped in front of a section of Grumpy Cat merchandise and said, "Ooh! There's a Grumpy Cat page-a-day calendar! You could get me one of those for Yule!"

A quick bit of back story, for those of you who have been living under a rock for the past couple of years: Grumpy Cat, whose real-life name is Tardar Sauce, is a sweet little kitty with a permanently cranky expression. Her debut -- a photo with the single-word caption, "NO" -- went viral. It spawned lots more picture memes (many of them with hurtful captions -- I guess some people can't help but be jerks) and got her humans a book contract and a movie deal. Reports that she made $100 million last year are apparently exaggerated, though.

Back to the card store, and my daughter telling me she wanted a Grumpy Cat calendar. I expect I said okay. I mean, I probably did. And then I forgot all about it. I'm old, okay? If it's not written on my to-do list -- or sitting in my email queue at the day job -- I tend to...SQUIRREL!

Come Yule morning, as we finished opening our gifts, Amy said, "Hey, I didn't get a calendar."

"Did you want one?" I asked. And she proceeded to remind me about the Grumpy Cat calendar. "Oh, right," I said faintly. And then I perked up. "Not a problem. I'll just go back to the card store tomorrow and get one."

Of course, they were out.

So was Barnes & Noble. So was Calendars.com. Amazon had them -- all from third-party sellers, starting at $39.99 plus $3.99 shipping.

You got it. Scalpers had moved into the Grumpy Cat page-a-day calendar market.

My older daughter, Kat, suggested I try eBay. Lo and behold, somebody there had one for sale. I bid $20 and was immediately outbid. I increased my bid to $23 and moved into the lead. Go me! But the auction had another day to run, and I figured I'd be outbid again before it was over. So I went back to the Zon and bought the $39.99 calendar.

Keep in mind, the list price on this thing is 15 bucks.

You already know what happened, right? I won the auction -- after the one I bought from Amazon had already shipped.

So Amy's got her calendar, and now I have an extra. Anybody want to buy it from me? I hear it's quite the collector's item.

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My heartfelt thanks to everybody who bought a copy of the Pipe Woman Chronicles Omnibus while it was on sale for 99 cents last week. And thanks, too, to the hundreds of readers who have already downloaded Seasons of the Fool since it went free on Friday. I hope y'all enjoy. And welcome to hearth/myth!

Seasons of the Fool is still free through Tuesday, December 30th, so if you haven't yet grabbed a copy, you've got time. Not a lot of time, mind you. Better run over to the Zon and get it now, before you forget....

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These moments of grumpy blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

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