Rose Asaf hopped in a cab to get to a nearby convenience store before 2 a.m. on Tuesday. Her aim was to score London’s must-have item of the moment: a pair of solar eclipse glasses.
“As I was pulling up in the Uber, I saw a giant crowd of people,” she said. “I was, like, this is wild.”
Ahead of Wednesday when a total solar eclipse will cross a slice of Europe for the first time in nearly 30 years, a frenzied rush is on in London. The sun will be around 90 percent obscured over the city, and it seems like nearly everyone wants a pair of difficult-to-find solar shades to keep their eyes safe before the main event.
Potential buyers are scouring certified sellers across the city. Nearly 7,000 people have joined a WhatsApp group providing stock alerts while others are sharing tips on suppliers online, with reports of vendors selling out within hours.
The Royal Observatory Greenwich, which is hosting a watch party for the event, said in a statement on Tuesday morning that it had sold out of glasses online but that “a very limited” amount would be available on-site through Wednesday. Hours later, the observatory said it was completely sold out because of “an unprecedented volume of orders.”
The specialized glasses, which are typically made of cardboard and mylar, a polyester film, are designed to filter out parts of the solar spectrum that can damage the eye, according to James Zavislan, a professor at the University of Rochester in New York, in a news release.
London won’t see another eclipse blocking out as much of the sun as this one until 2081, according to the Royal Observatory Greenwich. Lisbon, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Milan and Dublin are among the cities that will experience a deeply eclipsed sun. Other cities in Spain and parts of Iceland will experience a total eclipse.
At the East London store, Ms. Asaf, a 29-year-old researcher, said that some people had told her they had been queuing for more than an hour after store clerks told customers that a delivery was set to arrive overnight from Heathrow Airport. A Reddit user posted a picture that appeared to show the crowd huddled under a floodlight at 2 a.m.
“Then some guy arrived with a big cardboard box and everybody cheered,” Ms. Asaf said. “It was really wholesome.”
The fervor, however, is leading to unsavory behavior. There have been reports of price gouging and huge markups, with some selling online for 12 British pounds (about $16) or more for a pair of the spectacles.
Tom Weaver, a 36-year-old planning officer, began looking for glasses this week, a little too late for any deals. Vendors online couldn’t ship the glasses to him in time, so he followed up on a tip that local stores were delivering them to customers via apps, like Deliveroo and Uber Eats. He came up short.
He eventually secured three pairs — at £8 (roughly $11) a piece — after traveling to the same store as Ms. Asaf, who hours earlier had paid under £6 (about $8) for her shades.
Given that 30 or so people were still in line when Mr. Weaver arrived around 8 a.m., he said, “they could probably have been charging a lot more.”