Speculators earned more than $ 15 million by reselling NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 graphics cards

In the past few months, an extremely unpleasant situation has been observed in the market for graphics solutions for the average gamer: in addition to the sudden rise in the rate of a number of cryptocurrencies, speculators have become more active, instantly buying up video cards and reselling them at a tangible markup. Data processing engineer Michael Driscoll has been following the actions of dealers on the popular online platforms eBay and StockX for almost six months, having collected enough interesting statistics and conducting a detailed analysis.

According to the specialist’s report, since mid-September 2020, resellers have been able to sell 49580 units of graphics adapters belonging to the Ampere generation, earning about $ 15.2 million.

Due to the increase in tariffs in the United States since January of this year, the prices of NVIDIA graphics adapters have significantly increased: for example, the most affordable model, represented by the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, was offered by speculators in early January for 160% of the recommended cost, and over the next three weeks, the price increased by 210 % of MSRP, gradually decreasing to 190% to date.

A similar situation developed with the GeForce RTX 3080 video card – the increase in cost compared to MSRP ranged from 70% at Christmas to 100% today (170-200% of the recommended cost), while for the GeForce RTX 3070 the beginning of the year was more successful – the overpayment for this model reached 70% (170% of MSRP).

As for the flagship model in the face of the GeForce RTX 3090, its cost among speculators has practically not changed over the past month – they ask for it only ~ 140% of the MSRP. The specialist believes that this is due to the fact that wealthy enthusiasts have already managed to purchase this product, while the rest are waiting for better times.

Image Source: Dev, Michael Driscoll

Unfortunately, manufacturers of graphic adapters are still unable to cope with the growing demand from the computer community, so this situation can persist for quite a long time.