Looks like MP3 players are still striking a chord in 2023.
Microsoft is giving away an unopened Zune portable media player to promote Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” movie — and the company isn’t even sure whether the discontinued MP3 player still works.
In Disney’s
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latest MCU flick, the music-obsessed main characters pass around a Zune — Microsoft Corp.’s
MSFT,
MP3 player developed to compete with Apple’s
AAPL,
iPod, which it stopped selling several years ago.
From the archives (2009): What’s to become of Microsoft’s answer to the iPod?
But Microsoft has unearthed at least one of its portable MP3 players to hand out in its “Zune sweepstakes,” which any U.S. resident age 18 and up can enter (as long as they are not a Microsoft, Marvel or Disney employee) by “liking” and retweeting the Zune post.
“We’re giving away this never opened Microsoft Zune,” the tech giant shared in a tweet, and admitting that, “We have no idea if it works.”
The company estimates the retail value of the 8GB Zune to be $180, which is what this particular model was selling for back in 2008, according to CNET. That sounds a bit steep today, considering that used 8GB Zunes regularly sell on eBay
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for less than $50, oftentimes for spare parts.
Then again, some other, larger Zune models have sold for upwards of $600 on eBay — including this one and this one. And there are hardly any sales of new Zunes on eBay.
Of course, older tech has been resold at a massive markup before. Earlier this year, for example, a 2007 factory sealed first iPhone sold at auction for $63,356.
Marvel’s newest Guardians film has performed well at the box office, having already grossed over $528.8 million worldwide as of Sunday.
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