I actually went to buy it. The poster costs $60, which, okay, whatevs. But it's another $50+ for shipping! Which, unless it ships framed, seems excessive for a print.

I love M'Obama, but that's just too much escarole for me.

Whoahyeah! When shipping almost > list price, it's always a weird psychological turn-off. Like if the poster just cost $100 and shipping was $10 it'd be totally fine. Well not *totally* fine -- that's an expensive poster -- but less like "Whuhhhh?"

Two contradictory factors at work here:

1) Neither of us really knows what a fair price is for a limited-edition artist's poster + Obama donation. So either $60 or $100 seems within the bounds of reason. However, we have a pretty clear idea of what it costs to ship something like a poster -- free-$10. So $50 feels like a rip.

2) It's totally a relative issue, not an absolute one. Like, if the poster cost $5 but $10 more to ship, we'd still be like "nah... that's too much for shipping. Let me see if I can find it for free."

You are so right! An economist could do a neat little study on this. The kind that would get into the Freakonomics blog.

I think it's all about point #1 -- we all feel like we know very well what shipping should cost, *and* (or therefore) we have a low "price elasticity" w/r/t shipping.

I love it.

Just a heads-up, that appears to have been an error. I got one a minut ago and the shipping was about $12 for Ground, and $20 for 2nd day air.