ASICMINER hardware has from its inception been a hardly break even, or negative expectation as far as ROI.
Why would they sell them for what they could mine with them? They should just mine with them in that case. Instead, they place the price higher than what they think they can mine with them and sell them to as many suckers as possible.
And it worked... it is truly genius!
Indeed! People look at the current calculator and say "13GH/s will net me 0.17BTC a day! This thing will pay itself off in less than 2 months!"
And they never think to look at the difficulty increases and how that will effect them.