Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card sold out in every online vendor and scalpers have quickly taken advantage. At least one eBay listing had a bid of $10,000 and several other listings have since appeared. Nvidia is aware of the situation and is taking corrective steps by investigating many of the orders that have been placed.
Nvidia announced that soon after the GeForce RTX 3080 became available, it had sold out online. This is usually cause for celebration by a manufacturer but, in this instance, it was met with alarm. Nvidia expected the rapid sales may have been due to foul play and in a forum statement apologized for any trouble customers had when trying to order. This was in addition to explaining how it is now reviewing orders to identify any that might have been placed by bots or scalpers. Nvidia makes what many consider to be the best GPU in the world, so brisk orders were expected. However the unprecedented demand raised red flags and its IT team set to work to correct the website lag and address what are suspected to be invalid orders.
A common location for tech scalpers is eBay, since minimal set up and customer interaction is required to facilitate a sale of products that exceed demand. While many scalpers are satisfied with a two times markup, some bold sellers ask for much, much more. First spotted by PaymoneyWubby on Twitter, there are numerous RTX 3080 cards on sale on eBay for thousands of dollars. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 is a fantastic graphics card, well worth the retail price of $699. However, when an eBay listing appears for $10,000, it is quite shocking. Even more stupifying is when over 40 bids are actually placed and continue to climb. At last check, the high bidder will pay $11,100. That is over fifteen times the retail price of the card.
The crazy thing about this situation is that it's not a single listing with ridiculously high bids. To be fair, it should be noted that the bid PaymoneyWubby highlighted had a starting price of 99 cents, not a common scalper technique. However, a new listing appeared with a starting price of $25,000, though no bids have been placed yet. Several other listings have been bid on, indicating shoppers are willing to pay several thousand dollars for the GeForce RTX 3080. How far this will go depends on supply. There is a chance that Nvidia may cancel a large amount of orders and supply will reach sufficient levels to eliminate any further bidding on overpriced cards.
If Nvidia takes another day to sort out the problem, or if the company finds that the customer demand really was as high as experienced, the $1000+ prices could continue for some time. Many of these auctions end tomorrow, although the adventurous seller that set a $25,000 starting price has their auction ending in ten days. That seems a bit over-ambitious, but may prove to be a savvy, if greedy, decision, if the situation continues. Whatever happens on eBay, Nvidia notes that more are being shipped to physical stores, so it may be worth checking locally before mortgaging the house for a graphics card.
Source: PaymoneyWubby/Twitter
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