The bidding on eBay for the black tumbler and gray dad hat with frayed stitching started at $19 on Monday, March 13.

Within two days, competing bids sent the price soaring to $305. The reason for the surge? The items were authentic logo-bearing merch from Silicon Valley Bank, the Santa Clara, CA-based financial institution that collapsed in what was the second biggest bank failure in U.S. history on March 10. Multiple promo firms had accounts at the bank, but are being reimbursed for their deposits in full.

This SVB dad hat and tumbler were commanding bids above $300 at the time of this writing.

The demand for the SVB dad hat and tumbler wasn’t exactly an anomaly.

People with SVB swag have been looking to sell it online, and some folks have apparently been willing to pay big bucks to get their hands on the merch following the bank’s demise.

This vest was for sale on eBay in the wake of the Silicon Valley Bank collapse.

There were, as of this writing, some 40 bids for a black YETI tumbler with SVB lettering. The price? $180.50. A blue SVB gift box that appears to have once contained branded gifts had 29 bids. It was indicated that the seller received the box after getting an offer letter one month before the bank “blew up.” The box was poised to fetch more than $200.

There were 11 bids for a $26 blue SVB apron, 12 bids for an impressive collection of water bottles ($151, as of this writing), a metal purse hook (24 bids, $26), a fidget spinner (6 bids, $5.50), and a beanie and scarf set (29 bids, $102.50).

This scarf and beanie set was on sale for more than $100 on eBay.

There was also a Patagonia brand black SVB-logoed quilted vest jacket with a starting price of $500, and what might be the most conspicuous of all the logoed goods: an ugly Christmas sweater. In addition to having the words “Silicon Valley Bank” emblazoned across the chest, the sweater featured graphics of snowflakes, cactus and what now must be seen with irony…dollar signs. The starting bid was $400.

Bidding started at $400 on eBay for this sweater.

Beyond the authentic SVB swag, there was also post-collapse mockery merch.

On Etsy, for instance, you could find all manner of hats and shirts saying “SVB Risk Management Department.” The bank, it seems, didn’t have a risk officer for much of 2022. In another sarcastic swipe, opportunistic sellers were offering shirts that featured graphics of runners, as if for a 5K, that read “SVB Bank Run 2023.” Ouch.

This sweatshirt mocking the SVB collapse was available on Etsy.

All of this got me thinking: What’s behind the demand for the merch?

I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, and I don’t pretend to really know the answer, but I wanted to hazard a couple guesses.

With the post-crash mockery merch, I think there’s a certain gallows humor that comes into play. Laughing is a way to fend off worrying, and in some respects the slag-off swag stirs a chuckle that’s better than finger-biting over the future of the American financial system and economy at large. Maybe, maybe not.  

This cap was for sale on Etsy.

I also think that in society there’s a current of contempt for big finance and big tech – which describes SVB and its main clientele to the core. And with that, there’s a degree of perverse pleasure in seeing such an entity collapse. Relatedly, it could simply be that competitors or others in the financial/tech industries get a bit of a dark thrill at SVB’s face-plant and want merch to commemorate it.

Perhaps, too, those similar dynamics of schadenfreude are at play in driving demand for the actual SVB merch being sold on eBay. Still, I think there are more fundamental sociological variables – namely, that owning a piece of real SVB merch is essentially holding a tangible representation of what’s probably one of the major moments in the United States’ financial/economic history.

“Own a piece of bank history!” one seller proclaimed on eBay. It’s dubious history. Painful history. But it is history. And the merch proclaims that.