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I’ve always wanted a game console to call my own. As a teen, I owned a first generation Game Boy. A couple of years back, WL got me a Game Boy Advance (GBA) as a birthday present. Between the two, they have kept me company and given me countless hours of entertainment. But still, I’ve always envied those with full blown game consoles.

The XBox 360, Nintendo Wii, and Play Station 3 just makes things worse. I would love to own one of them. In fact, I would purchase one except for the retail price of these babies and the cost of original games. Sure, it is a one time cost but can I really afford the price tag?

If you’re like me and you’ve always wanted to own a state of the art game machine, then there’s still hope. You can get an Xbox 360 for a penny on Penny Auctions. Sounds interesting? Read on.

The site periodically puts items up for auction on eBay with the starting price of a single penny. Yes, that’s one single cent. The reason they are able to do this is because the site relies mostly on advertising to fund these nifty gifts. Highest bidder wins of course. Items on auction includes games, game consoles, and a variety of miscellaneous gadgets.

A rather ingenious way of making money really. Make money off advertisements, buy a console, put it up for auction, and possibly earn back your investment through the auction (or near the full retail amount). Think of it as a reservoir with tiny streams leading in and a single stream leading out. As long as the advertising (input + auction) is more than the cost of whatever they put on auction (output), they’ll make a profit. Cost and effort is nearly nill.

While the concept is cool, I don’t particularly like the design of the site. The colours clash and are a little hard on the eyes. There’s also very little information to be gleened, except for what I’ve already mentioned above. You can read a brief of how things work in the FAQ page. It would be good to have an RSS feed or newsletter subscription to tell their readers what’s new on auction. Lastly, they really should fix the Money Back Guarantee policy page since it currently pops up in a new window minus the site’s theme. Really makes for awkward browsing. All that can be fixed though and is really besides the point.

The point is that you can get a game console for nearly nothing. I wish they would drop a hint on when the “XBox 360 for a penny” offer will be made available. I guess that’s their way of generating buzz and traffic. Nonetheless, it is definitely something worth waiting for.