It could be said that nowadays finding a video card at acceptable prices is like doing a lottery, but we never thought that anyone would go so far as to turning the purchase of a GPU into a game of luck (or if you prefer, of chance).
As reported by the site Wccftech, a “Lucky Box“sold at approx 100-125 dollars, inside which a mix of old and new video cards is inserted. Whoever buys this “Lucky Box” does it in a poke (!), that is, he cannot know what he will find inside.
According to the description on Amazon, there is a 16% chance to find a card from the GeForce GTX 900 or Radeon Rx 300 family inside, an 8% chance of getting a GeForce GTX 1000 or a Radeon RX 500, a 4% chance of finding a GeForce RTX 2000 or Radeon RX 5000 GPU and finally 2% of tracking a GeForce RTX 3000 or a Radeon RX 6000 (top of the range included). The remaining slice of the percentage is made up of even older and definitely unusable NVIDIA and AMD GPUs, as they are not very powerful. Incidentally, while the newer GPUs are new and packaged, the others will certainly be used as they are no longer in production.
The buyer of this box who finds a latest generation GPU such as the RTX 3090 obviously does an epochal deal, but those who find an old model of the GeForce GTX 1000 or Radeon RX 500 series could do so too, solutions that in this period could yield however a few hundred dollars if resold.
Apparently the “Lucky Box” has found a good success because it is sold out (or maybe there were few, who knows). It is not known at the moment if any buyer has found a modern GPU inside the box or the status of the products present, but it is good to know that the seller does not “accept returns or exchanges”, so take it or leave it.
The idea is very reminiscent of the “loot box” of video games, that is the prize boxes filled by a random generator inside which there are virtual objects: you can get things of great value cheaply, but it is rare, or some simple digital junk. In this case the junk is physical, and we at least hope that since it is electronic waste it will be disposed of in the appropriate way.