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. 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.
