OPENAI HOODIES ARE SELLING FOR $475 ON EBAY

OpenAI's Codex swag never touched a Silicon Valley IPO, and it still sold for $475 on eBay this month. A hat, a hoodie, and a handful of stickers, bought by someone who will never own a share of the company. That is the actual trade happening right now: buying the branding because the stock is not for sale.

Forbes contributor Anna Tong broke the numbers on July 16, 2026, tracking a secondary market that has turned employee only merchandise from OpenAI and Anthropic into some of the more unusual collectibles on eBay. Anna Tong's reporting lines up with what showed up on the brand's own Instagram: people paying roughly $250 for used sweatshirts to, in the post's words, cosplay proximity to Silicon Valley's money machine.

$475 for a Hat, a Hoodie, and a Cardboard Box

A box of OpenAI Codex swag, one hat, one hoodie, and a set of small extras, sold for as much as $475 on eBay this month. A separate listing for a plain used OpenAI sweatshirt closed at $246.99, almost exactly the figure Forbes cited when it clocked the going rate for a used shirt at around $250.

Neither item shipped with a lockup agreement or a cap table. The buyer is paying for the logo, not the equity, and the OpenAI Codex Micro Keypad already showed how far people will go to own a small, tangible piece of a company that mostly exists as software.

Mitchell Brody and His Daughter Sunny Run the Shop

Mitchell Brody sells AI startup merchandise out of an eBay storefront he runs with his college age daughter, Sunny. He currently has an employee issued OpenAI t shirt listed at $249.99, priced for buyers who will never sit anywhere near the company's boardroom.

Brody's read on why people are paying that much: "I do think these are the vintage concert rock shirts of tomorrow. It's geek chic. There's going to be a day when people brag about the OpenAI double stitch shirt they got in the roaring twenties." He is not selling hype. He is selling the same instinct that keeps a 1994 tour tee circulating at record shows decades after the band broke up.

The Vintage Concert Rock Shirts of Tomorrow

Brody's comparison holds up because concert tee resale is already a mature market. Decades old Rolling Stones and Metallica shirts move through the same grading, authentication, and price tiering that sneaker resellers use, and AI startup gear is being priced the same way before either company has gone public.

Anthropic's merch is scarcer and it shows in the numbers. An authentic Anthropic employee t shirt fetched $120, an Anthropic branded pen sold for $39.99, and Anthropic baseball hats are running $50 to $100 on eBay right now, prices a company merch table would never charge if it were selling to the public directly. The same collector logic that drives streetwear, like the Gallery Dept hoodie that turned one painted word into a $650 price tag, is now pricing pens and hats from a company that has never sold merch to the public at all. A forty dollar pen only works as a listing if enough buyers agree that owning it means something a mug from any other tech company does not.

OpenAI Supply Co. Just Opened to Everyone

OpenAI Supply Co., the internal store that used to serve only employees, opened to the public on July 15, 2026, a Wednesday, according to Forbes. That single move puts official, first party branded product back into a market Brody and his competitors built almost entirely around scarcity.

It is a direct test of Brody's own theory. Concert tees hold value because the tour ends and the shirt stops being reprinted. OpenAI just reprinted its own shirt for anyone with a credit card, while Anthropic keeps its supply tight enough that a branded pen still clears forty dollars. One company is betting scarcity was never the point. The other is still charging for it, the same way it keeps resetting usage limits on Fable 5 instead of opening the tap.

Within a month, the eBay listings will say which bet paid off. If a $249.99 employee shirt and a $120 Anthropic tee are still moving at those prices after OpenAI Supply Co. floods the market with $50 hoodies anyone can buy, Brody's vintage tee comparison holds. If they are not, the roaring twenties bragging rights were cheaper than anyone thought.