The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card isn’t on sale until February 25, but that hasn’t stopped at least one scalper from getting their hands on the latest RTX 30-series GPU — and attempting to resell it for an outrageous markup.
In fact, as VideoCardz reported, they’re selling three. Onliner, a Belarussian second-hand marketplace, lists a trio of the Gigabyte-made RTX 3060 cards at the equivalent of around $1,080 each. Yes, each. For a GPU with an MSRP of $329.
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It’s a disappointing repetition of the pattern that’s plagued the RTX 30-series from the moment it launched last year. Anyone looking where to buy the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 or where to buy the Nvidia RTX 3070 will have found legitimate retailers sold out for weeks at a time. Meanwhile, scalpers use bot scripts to instantly buy up any restock units and hawk them at several times the market value.
The recent boom in digital currency mining hasn’t helped, as already-limited stock is bought up by prospective miners to build their rigs. Nvidia even brought back older GPUs like the RTX 2060 to meet this demand.
Nvidia’s approach with the RTX 3060 gave some hope that this latest GPU launch would be different. Nvidia intentionally tuned the RTX 3060’s software so that it’s much less effective at digital currency mining. If all went to plan, miners would lose interest in the RTX 3060, leaving more stock available for ordinary consumers and scalpers with fewer customers willing to pay their inflated prices.
Sadly it looks like hopeful RTX 30-series buyers will need to endure the reseller problem a while longer. VideoCardz also noted the possibility that the owner of the Onliner listing might be reselling the three GPUs after being disappointed in their mining performance. That’s a worrying thought: miners, one of the two biggest drains on RTX 30-series stock, feeding the reseller market, the other biggest drain. What a nightmare.
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