Scalper's Hardware Paradise Just In Time for the Holidays

plat

Level 29
Thread author
Top Poster
Sep 13, 2018
1,793
Excerpt from article:

Michael Driscoll, an Oracle data engineer, has written a data scraper that runs through eBay listings for the latest hardware, comparing products with their sale price. The objective was to see just how pervasive scalping actually is, and to get a (flawed and incomplete, but still extremely interesting) outlook at the scalping ecosystem and their gains with the current hardware and console shortages. Driscoll analyzed sales for the Xbox Series X|S, the PS5 (discless and disc-based) as well as NVIDIA's RTX 30-series, AMD's RX 6000 series, and Zen 3 processors. There are some assumptions on the gathering and analysis of this data, but that is part of the beast.

The results are potentially desperation-inducing. AMD's Zen 3 CPUs have sold for sometimes 240% of their MSRP (looking at the biggest offender, the Ryzen 9 5950X. The RX 6800 XT graphics card has been selling for within an inch of 200% of its MSRP as well, with a median price over the past week set at $1247 (compare that to the $649 MSRP). The RTX 3080 has been selling at 180% of its MSRP for the past week, but it has been moved at 220% of its MSRP before. The case repeats with several degrees of severity for the Xbox family and PS5 consoles.

All in all, scalpers have already made an estimated $89 million in sales, with an estimated $39 million in profits from reselling these pieces of hardware. eBay and Paypal have each taken an estimated $6.6 million and $2.4 million, respectively, from fees over these sales. Of course, this data only looks at eBay, and not any of the other scalper-ridden marketplaces and selling venues, so this is only a partial outlook at this pervasive problem.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Read more at the linked article, including various comments that follow.
 

plat

Level 29
Thread author
Top Poster
Sep 13, 2018
1,793
Amazon is another major offender that should have been mentioned with greater emphasis. The manuf. suggested retail price that area vendors like Best Buy and Micro Center are honoring are selling Founders Edition rtx 3070 for 499.99 USD. But they can't keep them in stock. Amazon has the stock (I wonder how) but is selling an MSI variant currently for 978 USD. It was even more of a rip off two weeks or so ago.

Prior to that, prices were around 1090 USD but very briefly, prob. b/c it was too outrageous. But people must have been buying them. :mad::coffee:

amazon ripoff.PNG
 

About us

  • MalwareTips is a community-driven platform providing the latest information and resources on malware and cyber threats. Our team of experienced professionals and passionate volunteers work to keep the internet safe and secure. We provide accurate, up-to-date information and strive to build a strong and supportive community dedicated to cybersecurity.

User Menu

Follow us

Follow us on Facebook or Twitter to know first about the latest cybersecurity incidents and malware threats.

Top