Pricing for NVIDIA’s popular GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards have ascended to insane levels on popular auction sites. The ludicrous amounts of money that users are apparently willing to pay (or, at least, bid on) was highlighted by PC Mag’s Michael Kan earlier this week, who published a story about how scalpers were now charging enthusiasts over $2,000 for green team’s flagship Ampere GPUs. Analysis provided by Chicago-based data engineer Michael Driscoll suggests up to a 243 percent increase over MSRP ($699 vs. $2,400).
“Since mid-September, scalpers have been reselling the RTX 3080 on eBay for around $1,300 to $1,500, which is almost double the original $699 to $869 cost, depending on the model,” Kan explained. “But in recent weeks, prices for the in-demand graphics cards have gone through the roof.”
“The median prices on eBay for all the RTX 3000 cards began to balloon in February. In the case of the RTX 3080, costs shot up to around $2,400. The RTX 3070, on the other hand, hit a high of over $1,200.”
Auction prices for the GeForce RTX 3080 finally began falling earlier this month after the release of NVIDIA’s more budget-oriented Ampere graphics card, however. As noted by Driscoll, the GeForce RTX 3060 and its $329 MSRP appears to have had an appreciable impact on what scalpers were willing to charge for its higher-performance sibling.
“The prices stopped going up exactly when the 3060 launched, so that can’t be a coincidence,” Driscoll told PC Mag. “Not a huge drop, but significant. For the increases, I have no way of confirming this, but I know many employers give out year-end bonuses in February, and people are starting to file and receive tax returns, which could be driving some of the price increase.”
Not surprisingly, AMD’s new Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards are also reportedly being sold for twice their MSRP on auction sites. Some of the factors behind this insanity include rising component costs, material shortages, tariffs, and the cryptocurrency mining boom.
