Its not that odd; in fact it makes perfect sense for two reasons:
1) If they intend to accept preorders long before shipping the hardware, these prices will pretty much guarantee a huge backlog before the first asic miner even starts pushing up difficulty in to the stratosphere and people start realizing that $30K per TH may not be such a good move after all. The price is just low enough for people to realize that gpu and fpga mining is dead and enticing those gpu/fpga miners to place an order. Remember, per GH silicon cost is very close to zero.

2) it scares potential competitors. My guess is BFL has at most taped out, but not made the maskset yet. Thats why they got VC money and Im assuming thats recent. So you are looking at ~3-6 months before they have silicon, and probably another 3-6 months before they are ready to ship your first coffee warmer. This is a good time to deter potential competitors.