I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
--Ralph Ellison
Posted by: The Parasite
(Also why are the swag bags the only thing everyone cares about, there are other awesome things to buy in the store?)
It's a combination of the way people think about the lottery and the fact that they were limited.
A Bag O' Swag was only $30 but you could get much, much more value than that if you were lucky (like the lottery), so people wanted it for that reason. It's also a psychological principle that scarce, rare or "limited" things are more desirable.
I ended up getting one myself (somehow) and I was pretty happy about it, but I also bought one of the limited posters and I'm planning on winning one of the auction items.