Tesla's limited-edition $250 tequila sold out within hours — now resellers are listing empty bottles for hundreds of dollars on eBay

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Tesla's limited-edition $250 tequila sold out within hours — now resellers are listing empty bottles for hundreds of dollars on eBay
Resellers are betting that Tesla fans will pay top dollar for a bottle, even if there's no tequila included.Tesla
  • Tesla released its own brand of tequila called Tesla Tequila on Thursday night.
  • The bottles retailed for $250 and sold out within hours.
  • Now, buyers lucky enough to score an order are reselling empty bottles on eBay for huge markups.
  • The platform prohibits sales of all alcohols aside from wine, but, according to current eBay listings, some people are willing to pay more than $700 for an empty bottle of the limited-edition liquor.
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Tesla released its own line of tequila Thursday, and the bottles sold out within hours. Now, some resellers are betting that people are willing to pay a high markup for a bottle of their own, even if it's empty.

Tesla Tequila launched Thursday night with a lightning-bolt-shaped bottle and a sticker price of $250, and as of Friday afternoon, there were some 90 listings on eBay from resellers who claimed to have secured an order. The platform strictly regulates alcohol sales — it restricts wine sales to approved sellers and prohibits the sale of other types of alcohol altogether — so the listings are only for an empty bottle and bottle stand.

But just because the Tesla Tequila bottles up for grabs don't contain any booze, that doesn't mean they don't command high prices. More than 40 bottles appear to have already sold on eBay at the time of writing, including dozens in the $500-$800 range. One bottle sold for $1,420.69, though it's unclear how many completed sales will actually go through, without either the seller or the buyer backing out.

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The bidding on several active listings has reached north of $500, with a few stretching past $600 and $700, as of this writing.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk first teased the idea of a Tesla-branded tequila in an April Fools' Day tweet back in 2018, wherein he joked about going bankrupt and passing out surrounded by empty bottles of "Teslaquilla." Later that year, Mexico's Tequila Regulatory Council pushed back against Musk when he attempted to trademark the name "Teslaquila."

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But now, two years later, Tesla Tequila has come to life as a 100% agave tequila, aged 15 months in French oak barrels and produced by Nosotros Tequila. Deliveries will start later this year, according to Tesla.

This isn't the first time that Tesla's non-automobile products have hit the second-hand market for multiples of their original cost. In July, the carmaker began selling red satin short shorts — to poke fun at Tesla short-sellers — for a shade over $69. Now they're selling for hundreds of dollars on used marketplaces like StockX.

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