The Great Pumpkin Shortage of 2010?
Buyer Beware as E-bay Sellers Take Advantage of 2009 Shortage
As of this writing, with the auction ending on October 13, 2010 the highest bid for nine 15-ounce cans of Libby's 100% Pure Pumpkin is $54.50. Yes, some home baker is willing to spend more than $6.00 per can of pure pumpkin to insure pumpkin pies and pumpkin rolls for the Thanksgiving table. The E-bay seller is a "Top-rated Seller" with a 100% positive feedback rating. In the auction listing, the seller informs desperate pumpkin seekers "They are already predicting pumpkin shortage."
Wow. I could almost imagine the price of these nine 15-ounce cans of pumpkin could soar to well over $10 each by the time the auction ends in mid-October, just so one family doesn't have to do without pumpkin pie this Thanksgiving. A quick search this morning shows 55 E-bay listings for "canned pumpkin". If only those willing to pay at least three times the retail price for canned pumpkin would look at their local grocery store.
According to several media sources, including the Columbus Dispatch, Libby's (owned by Nestle-USA) is already shipping canned pumpkin to grocery stores across the country. My Northwest.com carries a tongue-in-cheek article featuring a photo of the "last six cans of Libby's pumpkin" from the 2009 harvest being guarded by a Libby's marketing manager.
In both articles, Libby's representatives reported earlier and larger plantings of the pumpkin crop for 2010.
E-bay marketers score a small point on the business-savvy scale, but lose on the trustworthiness scale for falsely reporting a 2010 pumpkin shortage.
I've been baking and selling pumpkin bread all summer long in Central Ohio. When my supply of frozen homemade pumpkin puree was depleted, I simply turned to my local GFS Marketplace store. A large (No. 10) can of pumpkin, currently priced at $7.99, will make 21 loaves of pumpkin bread.
Sources: E-bay ; Columbus Dispatch ; My Northwest.com
Published by Debbie Henthorn - Featured Contributor in Business & Finance and Lifestyle
Debbie has been blessed with an incurable wanderlust. Former jobs included extensive travel throughout the United States, making it possible for this self-proclaimed "food/beer/wine geek" to taste the countr... View profile
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11 Comments
Post a CommentHere we are in July 2011 and again the store shelves are empty of canned pumpkin. Fortunately, my church has had cans of pumpkin donated to it and most of the Latino recipients return the cans they get from the church's food bank. Pumpkin seems to be a food that they are not familiar with. So with a lot of gratitude, the church gladly gives the cans to me. They get it all back in the form of Pumpkin/Cranberry cookies and Pumpkin/Cranberry bread to be sold at the food table for their Fall Fair.
Again I will be the recipient of their generosity this year. But I am also heading out the door the day AFTER Halloween to my nearest "pick your own" farm. (The price drops drastically then.) I will be picking the small ones. The brighter orange, the sweeter the pumpkin. They have the most natural sugar. When I get them home I will store them stem side DOWN in a dark cool place. The following Saturday, I will plan on spending the whole day cleaning and roasting them flesh side
I'm not a very good cook, but I recently made pumpkin pie from fresh pumpkins, and it turned out great. So, if there ends up being another shortage ever again, I recommend people use real pie pumpkins instead of paying so much for canned on Ebay! (And if I can do it, most other people can too.)
Never knew about a pumpkin shortage. Interesting.
There are pumpkins galore arond here, whole and in cans, no problem.
I just bought 4 cans at Publix.
According to media sources, Libby's 100% pure pumpkin should begin arriving in stores the third week of September, 2010. The pumpkin WILL be available in stores at normal prices - I'm trying to spread the word that there is NOT a shortage in 2010 and help people avoiding spending unnecessary money to unscrupulous e-bay sellers.
If it is being shipped, to where I cannot find a single can of pumpkin anywhere.
Libby's wasn't recalled - the heavy rains in Illinois made it impossible for the tractors to get the pumpkins out of the field. They actually ran short and what they should have had to last the entire year was distributed to stores by Thanksgiving.
My whole foods pumpkin cupcakes have directions for baking pumpkins to use instead of iffy canned pumpkin. Libby's pumpkin was recalled last year.
There sure doesn't seem to be a pumpkin shortage around here... plenty to choose from already!