Men far braver than us here have been hard at work since August trying to answer a simple question: approximately how many iPhone 3Gs has Apple sold? Two months later, an answer: nearly 10 million. And that’s in a terrible economy, no less.

The exciting journey began on August 1, when a poster asked for iPhone IMEI numbers, the unique number that’s used to determine the number of phone’s sold (among other uses). Several IMEIs, a spreadsheet, and some glitter and crazy glue later, we have a number: 9,190,680. While the number is astonishingly specific, keep in mind that counting IMEIs in this manner is an inexact science at best.

And this matters why, exactly? For one, it illustrates the point that, yeah, people really dig Apple’s products, even if they’re not exactly all that Steve Jobs makes them out to be, hype-wise. Second, you can stretch the analysis here wafer-thin to come to this conclusion: Apple knows how to weather a crappy economy. One of the more credible rumors circulating about the upcoming MacBook re-design is that it’s reasonably cheaper than current Apple laptops, somewhere south of $1,000.

And as a goof, watch Apple come out with laptops, probably on October 14, made of solid gold with platinum trim.

Apple 2.0 [Apple iPhone 3Gs: 9,190,680 and counting]