With a new company, almost everything is a first - and tomorrow, Nothing will start experiencing a major one. As it was announced by the companies involved, the first units of the ear (1) true wireless earbuds will be available to buy in less than twenty-four hours.
What you need to know
Only one hundred pairs will be available, each of them part of a numbered series. You won’t be able to access a digital store, place them in your cart and proceed to the checkout. That’s because Nothing teamed up with StockX to exclusively auction this batch in the “first-ever electronics DropX”.
The more you end up paying, the lower the engraved number will be. So the highest bid will get the 1/100 pair and the lowest one grants you the 100/100. One of the biggest question marks as of now is: how high will the bids go? Contextually, the official prices are announced to be $99, €99, £99, and ₹5999.
Described by the company as a “Blind Drop”, this “will be the first time Nothing products have ever been made available for purchase”. This also means that when the auction starts, customers know very little about the product itself so the bidding will be akin to a leap of faith.
Where and when
The auction - or DropX - will take place on the StockX site. The start is scheduled for tomorrow, July 19, at 9:00 AM EDT [14:00 BST], and it will be available until Wednesday, July 21, at 8:59 AM EDT (here’s a good time converter so you know the exact hour where you live).
If you are interested, the process seems simple enough. You will need to log in with your StockX account (or create one) and just place a bid “on the DropX product page once it goes live”. As it is officially mentioned, “your bid will only be charged if selected as a winner”.
To those reading this thread who are thinking about bidding, have in consideration that these are the payment methods accepted by StockX:
All Regions
- All major credit cards including Visa, MasterCard, American Express, JCB, UnionPay, and Discover.
- Debit and gift cards backed by major credit card brands are also accepted.
- Alipay
- PayPal
North America, EU, and UK
US Only
You can check the shipping costs to your region here, knowing that the company uses “DHL, ECMS, FedEx, SF Express,T-Force, and UPS, depending on your location” to ship your order.
The conclusion as a springboard
This thread is going to be updated regularly during the auction time frame. It’s true that Nothing has fans and potential buyers outside these forums, however, how do you see this practice? Will you try and cop a pair of ear (1) during the next couple of days?
I hope we can have an interesting conversation about the moments before the auction starts and your best predictions, the highlights of how these one-hundred pairs are going to be dealt with, and naturally the aftermath with perhaps some lessons learned.
After that, the Nothing ear (1) will be officially launched Tuesday, July 27, at 14:00 BST.
