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Our collective hearts are breaking for the poor scalpers:
It's no secret that the RTX 4080 has not been selling particularly well, primarily due to its $1,200 price tag, which most people feel is far too expensive. The situation has even impacted scalpers, with many now having to resell their cards at MSRP or even less in some cases. A few second-hand sellers have tried returning them, which seems to have prompted certain retailers to stop offering refunds for the RTX 4080.
We're used to seeing graphics cards arrive with such high demand that they're quickly bought in bulk by scalpers and sold on auction sites at hugely inflated prices. But the MSRP of the RTX 4080 (and RTX 4090) has led to memes calling Nvidia the scalpers.
Our investigation last month showed that the RTX 4080 isn't selling that well—most retailers have plenty in stock. But it seems plenty of scalpers assumed the Lovelace card would be hard to find, so they decided to purchase units for resale.
That lack of demand and abundance of stock is evident on eBay, where many RTX 4080 cards are selling for around or just over their official store prices, a far cry from the bad times when GPUs were being scalped for three or four times their MSRP.
VideoCardz reports that one scalper is offering six RTX 4080s from various manufacturers for MSRP. The seller writes that the "Market isn't what I thought."
It appears that being unable to sell the RTX 4080 cards has caused several resellers to return them for their money back—where allowed. YouTube channel Moore's Law is Dead spotted that Newegg is not letting buyers return the cards for refunds, possibly in response to so many scalpers trying to cut their losses.
The problem is the same in Germany: Scalpers buy the GeForce RTX 4080, put it on eBay - and what does not sell is sent back to the retailers. Unfortunately, the legal situation in Germany definitely prevents retailers from excluding returns.
[...] Things aren't going to improve for RTX 4080 sellers looking to make a quick buck. There are more cards from different AIB partners arriving all the time, and the upcoming launch of AMD's cheaper Radeon RX 7900 series will likely make Nvidia's prices look even less appealing. Given what gamers went through over the last couple of years, it's hard to imagine people shedding any tears for the poor scalpers.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 10 2022, @09:23PM (2 children)
There isn't a serious argument here. Sorry, that you might have to pay more on rare occasions while for something that should cost more.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday December 10 2022, @09:51PM (1 child)
Made amply clear but you don't want to understand it. In brief, rent seeking, creating artificial scarcity on top of lesser actual scarcity, creating friction and using it to skim off money for nothing.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 10 2022, @11:59PM
And you missed the obvious - it's not rent-seeking nor is the scarcity more artificial. First, we've already established that there are benefits to scalping and that you chose not to recognize those benefits. Second, before it was a case of artificial abundance - pricing a good cheaply as if you had vastly more of it than the demand at that price would be. There's only two circumstances under which scalping is at all viable - the supply of the good doesn't meet demand at a given price or it almost does, but there's high inelasticity. Either is a sign of poor pricing in the market.