GPU Scalpers in Dire Straits

Gamers around the globe felt the impact of the chip shortage during the past few years, and most of the blame falls on scalpers. The M.O. of scalpers is to buy out as many GPUs as they can at launch so that the only way the users can buy one is from them and without a doubt, at prices higher than MSRP. During the shortage, GPUs were being sold on eBay sometimes even for 2 times the retail price. Much to the joy of our fellow gamers, scalpers have finally faced a major upset.

As was the norm, they bought out a ton of the RTX 4080 cards at launch and posted them on sites like eBay. However, this time, they simply did not sell. Left with a ton of cards that were of no use to them, the scalpers headed back to refund them, only to have the door shut in their faces as sites like Newegg outright removed the refund button on their sites. Finally, the imminent launch of AMD’s Radeon 7900 graphics cards entails a deadline by which scalpers must get rid of their cards, beyond which they would likely end up with no chance of evening out and probably end up losing money.

Hence, Scalpers had to resort to flocking to third-party marketplaces such as Facebook to make up for some of the losses. With everyone aiming to sell to at least make some money back, competitive pricing on these sites may even bring prices to lower than MSRP. The 4080 cards have been riddled with challenges. First, the 12 GB version was cancelled after media and consumer backlash due to its decreased feature set and performance, making it far too different from the 4080 standards.

Then, the 16GB version also didn’t fare well in markets, mainly due to the fact that it offers performance per dollar ($24.6 per TFLOP) as compared to the 4090 ($19.5 per TFLOP). Low demand is not the only reason though. With the end of the chip shortage, manufacturers have enough stock to keep the shelves stocked and consumers are happy to buy from official sources with the attached warranty.

This article is written by Gaurav Advit.