February 13, 2004

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As a college economics major, I love it when we’re able to assign specific prices to things that were once forsaken to the realm of qualitative mumbo-jumbo.

So of course I dig this post over at Collision Detection.

Turns out that thanks to phone number portability, someone is auctioning the number 867-5309 on eBay. (Like the song, you know? And now the Cingular commercial.)

So in nine days we’ll know the market value of 867-5309. As of this writing it’s $1,475.00.

Last year in China, a phone number comprised entirely of 8’s — very lucky, according to Chinese numerology! — was auctioned off for around $300,000. (The winner was an airline, which planned to use the number for its 24-hour service hotline.)

Now, I don’t know if any kind of robust market is actually going to spring up for phone numbers.

But it’d be cool if it did! We could run statistics on the numbers and their prices and test for the positive effects of repeated digits, repeated sequences, sequential digits, etc.

So yes, by “cool” I mean “dorkily satisfying.”