I’m guessing most of those people are doing this simply as an investment.
If you take a few days off, buy it for $600, and sell it for $3000+, you just made $2400 for two days “work”. And that “work” was sitting around on a sidewalk. $2400/48hours = $50/hr. That’s a decent hourly rate for sitting on your ass, and I’m guessing it’s WAY more than most of those people camping out make at their real jobs (if they even have one).
I’d be really interested to know how many of these campers actually plan on keeping the thing.