Update, 4:40 p.m. Sunday: A bidder snagged a 2014 Corvette Stingray media kit in a numbered, sealed presentation box for $500 from a Redford seller whose eBay ID "puckpop."
Brace yourself for a shock: Some journalists are opportunists.
We're stunned, too, but it's true. And it pisses off an insider, veteran auto industry writer Justin Hyde, so much that he calls out a particularly crass form of opportunism at the Motoramic blog:
No fewer than ten press kits from the reveal of the 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray on Sunday [in Detroit] are up for auction on eBay . . . [with] bids ranging above $300.
A search on Sunday for "2013 NAIAS press kit" at eBay shows 74 items, including brochures, pins and logo flash drives.
Jeff Kowalski, a self-employed West Bloomfield news photographer, posts on Facebook::
I know one photographer who was selling his Stingray kit on eBay. He made more off of that then he did to cover the event.
Hyde, a former Detroit-based national auto writer for AP (1999-2001) and Washington correspondent for the Detroit Free Press (2005-10), is a senior editor at the Yahoo! blog.
He derides North American International Auto Show profiteers -- some of whom who also peddle now-expired media passes and other giveaways -- as "scuzzballs" and adds:
If you respect yourself as a journalist, selling swag you got for free as part of your job lies beyond the red line.
Scott Burgess, Motor Trend's Detroit editor, agrees. "It comes across as poor form," he tweets.
