The top-three best-selling products in Amazon's ($AMZN) "Appliances" category as of today are freezers. At another time in history, Amazon Appliances would normally be topped by hairdryers, air conditioners, and toasters. But as the Coronavirus epidemic leads people to hoard supplies, shopping habits have changed drastically.

And now with recent news of a crush on meat supplies, Amazon shoppers are buying up freezers for their garages and utility rooms in order to store backup supplies should things get any worse.

The first rush to buy freezers began in the second half of March 2020, when the average freezer prices shot from $176 to $312. This came just as the number of freezers in Amazon's Appliances top-100 seller list swelled from 13 SKUs to 38 out of the 100 best-selling appliances. 

This is highly unusual in terms of Amazon shopping behavior. A look at the history of freezer sales and commonality at Amazon reveals just how much of a crush they're seeing in both popularity and price.

Previous to the Coronavirus pandemic, freezers saw some popularity during winter months, presumably as people hunkered down for cold spells.

But as we see above, they've never been this popular or common in Amazon's best-seller lists.

As of today, the Midea WHS-129C1 Single Door Chest Freezer is the number-one best-selling appliance at Amazon. It sells for $200. The more expensive — and double the size — Midea MRC070S0AWW Chest Freezer, which comes in at $600, is the second-most popular appliance. A third freezer from Whynter takes spot three.

For a little perspective, at this time last year, the three most-popular appliances were hair dryers.

About the Data:

Thinknum tracks companies using the information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales. 

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