It also reiterates a pattern we’ve been seeing for years — that global-scale events are almost always a sure bet to shift the market.

Today, as thousands gather in Los Angeles (as well as many other places around the world) to remember the King of Pop, we’ve played around with our most recent data set and found a few more remarkable figures. Consider the following:

• In the 10 days prior to Jackson’s death, there were a combined 2,365 eBay.com listings using “Michael” and “Jackson” as keywords; over the 10 days following, that number climbed to 104,283.
• Over the 10 days prior to Jackson’s death, the sell-through rate for similar eBay.com listings was 30.49%; over the 10 days following, that number rose to 58.56%
• Over the 10 days prior to Jackson’s death, the average price of similar eBay.com listings (filtering out several outlier listings of over $100K) was $22.70; over the 10 days following, that number rose to $29.95.

Those final average price figures are even more remarkable when you consider that, prior to Jackson’s death, expensive concert tickets would have been inflating that $22.70!

Finally, we’ll leave you with a couple Terapeak screen shots that we think are pretty telling. First, here’s the past 30 days’ eBay.com listings for “Michael Jackson”:

And here’s the top of Terapeak’s Hot 100 Music section (trust us, he’s got a whole bunch more on there):