The Number of Nelson Mandela Items on eBay

Dec 2013

Nelson Mandela died on 2013-12-05. It was a shock even though I knew that he was very ill and had spent three months in the hospital earlier in the year. As I did with the death of Michael Jackson I wanted to see how much eBay profiteering would be attempted upon his death, so for a few months I had already been tracking the number of items available on eBay.

I learned the sad news about 80 minutes after the announcement was made near midnight South African time. Sure enough, there was already a jump in the eBay item count. I began recording data more frequently in order to catch the shape of the curve as the counts increased. The item count appears to have stabilised after a week and likely will not increase by a multiple as large as Mr. Jackson's count did upon his death. I suspect that Mr. Mandela's age and long illness reduced the surprise when the sad event finally happened. I still found it a shock but it seems reasonable to assume that people had been somewhat prepared for the eventuality and so the opportunity for profiteers to strike and cash-in was reduced but not eliminated.

Note that these numbers have no relation to how many items are actually selling. These are only counts of items offered.