If you’ve been struggling to find where to buy the Nvidia RTX 3080, or any other Nvidia GeForce RTX 30-series graphics card, you’ve probably already been beaten to the punch by scalpers.
Now an analysis of the GPU reseller market has revealed the scale of the problem, with nearly 50,000 Nvidia Ampere cards selling across just two sites.
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Oracle data analyst Michael Driscoll created a script that pulls data from two of the biggest reseller haunts: eBay and StockX. The analyst found that scalpers have made around $15 million in total profits.
Meanwhile, ordinary consumers are facing lasting shortages of the entire Nvidia GeForce RTX 30-series range, as well as other scalper favorites like the PS5 and Xbox Series X.
Driscoll’s analysis revealed not just the vast quantities in which the GPUs are being resold, but the huge markups scalpers are charging. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3060 Ti seem to have it worst: on eBay, both GPUs sold at a median price more than double their respective MSRPs.
Most of the stock ends up on eBay, with 39,064 units resold compared to 10,616 on StockX. The GeForce RTX 3080 is the most frequently resold model on eBay, where it’s shifted 14,066 units, whereas the GeForce RTX 3070 narrowly outsells the RTX 3080 on StockX with 3,697 sales to 3,473.
Prices also went even higher as a knock-on effect from recent new tariffs on PC components imported from China, which Driscoll said hiked MSRPs up between 7% and 25%. Unsurprisingly, resellers raised their prices just as much.
It’s all another grim reminder of how ineffective retailers have been at ensuring stock goes into the hands of regular customers, and not the reseller's bots.
It’s also a sign of how gigantic the reseller market actually is. Many GeForce RTX 30-series restocks we’ve witnessed only include units in the double figures — imagine how many of those restocks were instantly cleaned out by scalpers to make up nearly 50,000 sales. And that’s not even counting new eBay and StockX listings that haven’t sold yet.
We'd like to say the situation will get better sooner than later. But it doesn't look like that'll be the case, stock shortages are set to continue for another few months at least. But keep checking back with Tom's Guide as we'll endeavor to bring you all the latest hot tech stock updates as soon as we know about them.
