Starbucks has released a special edition stainless steel gift card. With an asking price of $450 USD, and a limited production run of 5,000 units, you’d think they were loaded with special privileges or lifetime discounts. Nope. They have $400 of credit loaded on them and come with a year’s membership in the Starbucks Gold Rewards program.

Where do I begin?

First and foremost, who buys a gift card so they can pay %12.5 more for their coffee than they would if they were paying with cash? The $50 production cost argument is crap: this is a prestige product – and unless Starbucks is paying as much for steel as they charge customers for drop coffee – the $50 production cost claim is stupidity at it’s finest. Speaking of the people who bought this card, it represents the height of stupidity to pay more for something than everyone else does for no apparent benefit. And apparently they sold out in minutes and are going for up to $1,000 on Ebay.

Second, Starbucks apparently now makes you earn your way into their customer loyalty program. It’s not bad enough that they know that you buy a Venti Triple No-Fat Soy Pumpkin Spice Latte between 7:15 and 7:45 AM every other Thursday from October 1st to February 1st, every year, but they also now make you earn your way into the “12th drink is free” punch card program that pretty much every other vendor on the planet does at this point. This card comes with a year of that program. If you’re enough of a Starbucks drinker to buy $400 of coffee for $450, you’d think this program would be free for life (or at least the life of the card). Nope. Just 12 months until you have to buy your way back in.

Third, a real espresso setup for home is cheaper than the gift card. You can get a real espresso machine and a pretty decent burr grinder for $429 (on sale) and still have enough money left over to get a pound and a half of artisan-roasted espresso beans.