An enterprising company with a retail location in midtown Manhattan managed to get its hands on five prerelease versions of the much-coveted BlackBerry Bold. What did it do? Put them up for sale, naturally. The price tag? A staggering $1,300. For that, you get a phone that may or may not be fully optimized for AT&T's network.The BlackBerry Bold, RIM's next-generation smartphone, was supposed to go on sale back in July. Then the date was pushed to August. The initial reason behind the delay was supposed to be network-related issues. Here we are in September, and still no BlackBerry Bold. At this point, no one appears to know exactly when the device will officially hit the streets. Some reports suggest that it will be early October before we see it. That is, of course, unconfirmed.

Despite its lack of official availability here in the United States, it has gone on sale in Canada and elsewhere. And, somehow, the New York BlackBerry Center got its hands on five of the smartphones over the weekend. The company, located in the Time-Life Building on Sixth Avenue at W. 50th Street in Manhattan, decided to sell their stock at a price only a banker could afford.

It sold all five for $1,300 each. Wow. That's a heck of a mark up. To those five who purchased them, good luck with your prerelease hardware!