Charlie Hebdo on eBay
January 14, 2015
Bids on the Charlie Hebdo "Survivors' Edition" closed at 95,500 GBP (123, 300 euros, $144,921) on online selling and auction website eBay on Wednesday afternoon just hours after the publication sold out across France.
Other eBay vendors listed the same Charlie Hebdo edition for immediate purchase at 15,000 euros ($17,680).
The cover price for the weekly paper is three euros.
It is unknown whether those offering the papers actually possessed the copies, or if the bids were genuine.
Paris-based media watchdog, Reporters without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontiers) was angered by the opportunism of those offering the papers for sale, "What is happening on eBay…is absolutely indecent," the group's director, Christophe Deloire, said.
Twitter users were equally disappointed.
Wednesday's publication is the magazine's first since last week's deadly attacks on staff at Charlie Hebdo. The first 700,000 copies sold out within hours of hitting newsstands early Wednesday morning.
The magazine's content was a message from the editorial staff that they would not be intimidated into pacifying their crude humor.
"Twenty-five years of work to be a weekly cartoonist," read one cartoon. "Twenty-five seconds of work to be a terrorist," read another.
In another cartoon, two men wearing balaclavas are seen wearing angel wings and bearing Kalishnikovs, with the caption "Hey, where are our 70 virgins?" The answer: "With the Charlie team, losers."
Islamist gunmen stormed Charlie Hebdo's Paris office last week, killing 12. The attack triggered a global outpouring of support for the satirical weekly.
Copies will be put on sale in other countries later this week.
Other products being sold on the auction website include "Je Suis Charlie" badges, mugs and key-rings. Those products were selling for just a few euros.
jlw/cd (AFP, dpa)