The “Je Suis Charlie” rallying cry has inspired a cottage industry on eBay with overseas sellers asking as much as $3,000 for the latest issue of Charlie Hebdo.
Copies of the previous week’s issue, which was said to have sparked the deadly attack by Islamist gunmen, were being offered for $80,000. Only about 60,000 copies of that issue exist.
By comparison, the satirical French weekly published 3 million copies of its current issue — the first after the massacre that left eight staffers dead — featuring a weeping Prophet Muhammad holding a sign that reads, “Je Suis Charlie,” or “I am Charlie.”
Those copies — with the headline “Tout Est Pardone,” which translates as “All is forgiven” — sold out within minutes of going on sale Wednesday in France.
The magazine will be in short supply outside France as well, with only 300 copies being shipped to the US, according to the exclusive distributor, Martin McEwen, an executive vice president at Montreal-based LMPI.
Another 1,600 print copies are destined for Canada, primarily in and around the French-speaking Montreal and Quebec City.
The magazine is expected to hit US newsstands as early as Thursday, although the nation’s biggest book chain, Barnes & Noble, has no plans to sell the issue at this point, sources said.
US readers will be able to buy an English-language digital edition Thursday through an iPad and Android app for 3 Euros (about $3.50).
Aside from actual issues of the weekly, sellers are hawking a range of other Charlie Hebdo-themed items on eBay, including other magazines that covered the massacre.
Monday’s issue of The New Yorker, featuring the Eiffel Tower, was offered for prices starting at $14.95, while this week’s issue of The Economist, with a cover image of a bloodied fist clutching a pencil, was going for $13.99.
One UK vendor was offering a poster of this week’s cover of Charlie Hebdo for $758.75.
Elsewhere, a “Je Suis Charlie” beanie was priced at $9.99; T-shirts started at $10.79, hoodies could be had for $25.64; and bumper stickers were listed for $3.75.
