I bought the 1st gen iPad knowing it was only going to be a stop gap measure until a newer version with a Camera came out (which I thought was going to be the killer feature - turns out I rarely use it) so I only bought the baseline version. I found the $499 baseline price a steal which quickly turned into my most used device. The value of Apple's products go way down the higher up the range of models you go, so I can see why iPad 1 owners may be upset - but it shouldn't be unexpected that the resale value of top range models depreciate faster than the baseline.

So I can't complain, I've got a lot of utility out of the iPad1 whose experience led me to buy the top of the line Retina iPad 3 when it came out. I was keeping the old iPad 1 around for compatibility (as an iOS dev) but I guess this means I wont need to hold onto it for much longer :).