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Pebble smart watch sells out on Kickstarter

The record-setting project has raised more than $10 million and took preorders for 85,000 watches, which is apparently the limit for the tiny company.

Eric Mack Contributing Editor
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Eric Mack
2 min read
The Pebble watch earned over 10 million dollars on Kickstarter, more than all past top projects on the site combined. Screenshot by Eric Mack/CNET

There's a very interesting sociological experiment going on over on Kickstarter right now, where the Pebble smart team watch has unwittingly tested the old notion that you can't have too much of a good thing. Apparently, though, you can.

That's right -- Pebble doesn't want any more of your money. It's drowning in cash. Earlier this week, with 75,000 watches already spoken for, it announced that only 10,000 more would be made available in exchange for a pledge of cash (essentially a preorder). Now they're all gone. All reward levels that would earn supporters their own smart watch are now all sold out.

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When Eric Migicovsky and his crew set out to raise $100,000 to get their smart wristwatch project off the ground and into production a few weeks ago -- the Pebble can run its own apps and also connects to an Android or iOS device via Bluetooth -- they had no idea they'd raise more than 100 times that amount. The Pebble project surpassed $10 million dollars raised before hitting its apparent production ceiling, smashing the previous record for the crowdfunding record.

If you took all the previous Kickstarter projects that at one time held the record for most funds raised and put all the cash they brought in in a big pile, it still wouldn't equal what Pebble's raised -- in fact, it would be about $3 million short.

There are still eight days left in the Pebble Kickstarter campaign, and the team is still encouraging interested parties to pledge a dollar or more to get updates and potentially be first in line when more of the smart watches become available. Of course, you could always sign up for the Pebble e-mail list for free, but then you wouldn't be a part of history, would you?

Pebble said via its Twitter feed today that details on plans to get the smart watches in retail outlets will be forthcoming once the Kickstarter campaign ends.