Any hope that HP might yet have the compassion to sell a few unlocked Pre 3s in the US appears to be dead at this point, and that means jilted would-be buyers need to be looking at alternative channels to get their fix. Well, there's a small opportunity this evening by way of eBay, where AT&T and Verizon versions of the phone -- both of which were expected launch carriers -- are now on sale for $599.99 and $750, respectively. It's unclear where the phones came from or how they found their way into the gray market, but a tweet from an apparent Palm employee suggests that company staff may have been given units that were forbidden from being resold. Rules are made to be broken, as they say.

Also up for auction is a TouchPad 4G for AT&T, but it'll run you $899.99 (that's $50 more than an HTC Jetstream off contract, for the record). Seeing how all three of these devices have been decisively canceled, opportunities to own any of them are probably going to be fairly rare, just as they were for the similarly doomed Palm Foleo.

Source: eBay (TouchPad 4G), eBay (Pre 3 for Verizon), eBay (Pre 3 for AT&T); via webOSroundup

Update: And that was quick -- both Pre 3s have sold within minutes of the story going up.