eBay withdraws Google Glass auction for flouting presale rules after it tops $15,000

UPDATE: The listing has now been removed. We’ve contacted eBay to ask who pulled it.

UPDATE 2: eBay tells us that “This item was removed as it was in violation of our presale listings policy.” The rules state, among other things, that the item should be “available for shipping within 30 days from the purchase date.”

If you thought that $1,500 for Google’s much-anticipated Glass was expensive, check this eBay auction which has already exceeded $15,000 for (supposedly) an early Glass unit.

That’s $15,000 for a unit that the person listing it admits he or she doesn’t even have yet. The story goes that the lister has been selected as an “early adapter” to receive the glasses, who will be “personally attending and picking up my pair in either Los Angeles, or New York at Google’s Project Glass launch event, which will take place some time after Feburary 27th.”

Alarm bells should ring here, given that as Owen Thomas at Business Insider points out, mis-spelling of ‘adopter’ aside, Google’s contest to get a Glass unit hasn’t even closed yet and Google says it will let winners know in mid-to-late March. We’ve contacted the seller for proof that they really have already been selected by some other means.

There’s still a day to go on this auction and already there have been 33 bids, showing that at least some people are so desperate for the groundbreaking device that they’ll trust a stranger with more than ten times its retail price in the hope that he or she comes through with an actual unit. Even if you’re vastly wealthy, hold off from this one, eh?

Header image credit: AFP / Getty Images