Since Saturday's opening of the first Starbucks outlet in Tottori Prefecture, Japan's least-populated prefecture and the last in which the coffee chain lacked a presence, limited editions of commemorative mugs and tumblers sold there have been fetching high prices in an Internet auction.
"We had expected this course of events, but their price tags are too high," said a Yahoo Japan official overseeing the Yahoo Auction website.
The Tottori-only mugs and tumblers, bearing the designs of local produce such as crabs and pears, were sold out in hours after the outlet opened Saturday. The original price tag for the mug was ¥1,140 while the tumbler sold for ¥1,330.
They were selling on the auction site for as much as ¥35,000 for the mug and ¥15,000 for the tumbler. As of Monday morning, a set of the two were trading at up to ¥28,000.
The outlet, near a train station in the city of Tottori, the prefectural capital, saw lines starting to form from around noon Friday. About 150 people had gathered by midnight to camp out for the opening, and eventually about 1,000 people lined up for Saturday's opening.