Craig, Daniel Craig is Hot on eBay

A few weeks have now gone by since the new James Bond film, Casino Royale, debuted in theaters, and people are still talking. Much of the buzz is positive, as it's performed solidly at the box office, and is being very well reviewed (it had a 94% rating as of this writing on Rotten Tomatoes). But some people, especially Bond purists, don't seem to like the "darker" Bond shown in this prequel, or have a lot of appreciation for Daniel Craig, the man who took the reins from Pierce Brosnan. So I, as I am wont to do, decided to use eBay Marketplace Research to take a look at how Daniel Craig items were faring on eBay. (In the interest of full disclosure, I admit to being biased, as I am a fan of his drug/mafia underworld film Layer Cake).

Well, there were no surprises here. Playing Bond will give almost any actor an automatic popularity boost, and Craig is definitely enjoying his. In the month running up to Casino Royale's release, his items were selling at pretty consistent clip: about 75 a week. But after jumping to around 150 the week before the movie hit, they more than tripled from November 16-22 (which covers the release weekend), with about 600 being moved. And for the week afterwards through today, the number was still hovering around 500. It's safe to say that Craig is hot on eBay (or as my coworker Jen said after seeing the movie - "Craig is just hot, period.")

The entire franchise got a goose too - in just the DVD & Movies category, around 3000 James Bond items were sold during release week (in the weeks prior, anywhere from 200 to 1300 sold).