PS - please provide 1 example of any consumer item where increased demand resulted in a price drop.
I will take anything from the last, say, 10 years
But I will ask to exclude items which are now mass produced instead of specialist equipment.
Such as the water feed tile cutter which I bought yesterday.
10 years ago you couldn't get such a thing (easily), but I got mine for £30.
re the 360 - it was exactly because everyone
wasn't prepared to queue up and buy one (and even if they did, no guarrantee of getting one) that the prices shot through the roof.
Limited supply, massive demand.
A lot of people who
had queued then put them on ebay.
Those people who
wish they had queued, started bidding.
Those people who realised that a fast buck was there for the grabbing, also started bidding.
Prices went up.
And up.
Eventually, everyone who was willing to pay over the odds, had one.
Supply equalled demand.
Prices started to drop back down towards RRP.
Now, supply exceeds demand - and surprise surprise, MS release a new model with extra bells (it's black, has HDMI and a big hard disk!), and reduce the price of the base model.
They are hoping to increase demand again.
The difference between a 360 and a gallon of fuel is that you (generally) don't need to replace the 360 once you have it (until the next model comes out anyway).
There is therefore a fairly finite demand.
With fuel, there is a (near) infinite demand.