In case you haven’t heard, there’s this wild new video game out, where you and a few friends get to be English kids with bad haircuts, who sing cute little pop songs that eventually become more complex, and eventually you pioneer this thing called rock and roll and take over the world… It’s pretty “out there”, but a lot of fun!

Okay, obviously we’re talking about The Beatles: Rock Band, which released just over a week ago, and which features some crazy specialized instrument add-ons, like Paul’s signature Hofner bass and Ringo’s branded drum kit. Not coincidentally, the game also launched in conjuction with remastered reissues of the band’s catalogue — which, here in the office, we’re pretty stoked on.  Of course, $250 retail (the cost of the 13-part box set) is a lot of dough to spend on tunes you’ve pretty much heard before — especially when paired with all the Rock Band packages — so for any fan to get in on the action, they’re looking at a hefty financial commitment.

As a result — and you know what we’re gonna say — eBay sales have gone through the roof.

Check out this 30-day All Sites total sales trend:

… and that’s just any listing with the keyword “Beatles” in it!

If total amounts aren’t your thing (fair, considering the new release factor), consider this: in the two weeks leading up to release date, sell-through also shot from 38% to 51%,  while bids per listing nearly doubled. And if holiday patterns are any indication… well, that’s only the beginning.

Terapeak’s Hot Media charts for September won’t come out for another couple weeks, but do you remember the following from a couple months back?

… Okay, we still can’t get over how unbelievable that is. Jaw-dropping. Inconceivable.

But don’t be surprised to see some kind of Beatles “lite” version as holiday sales pick up…

AuctionBytes, an online publication that reports on ecommerce and eBay, yesterday published a terrific article titled “Terapeak Quantifies the Michael Jackson Effect on eBay”. Chock full of eye-popping sales figures taken before and after the performer’s death, the article does a great job illustrating the impact of Jackson’s death across the entire eBay platform.

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):