Raevenlord
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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.
One can hope that this will come to an end and that people will actually look beyond greed, but that's likely just wishful thinking. I think it's fair to say, and to expect, that this scalping phenomenon will keep happening in future hardware releases, now that some greedy individuals already have the tools and the profits to encourage them towards this behavior. All hardware launches have limited initial availability; and hence, all of those will be the scalpers' paradise, provided there are enough of them keeping up with these activities to drain retailers of stock.
View at TechPowerUp Main Site
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.
One can hope that this will come to an end and that people will actually look beyond greed, but that's likely just wishful thinking. I think it's fair to say, and to expect, that this scalping phenomenon will keep happening in future hardware releases, now that some greedy individuals already have the tools and the profits to encourage them towards this behavior. All hardware launches have limited initial availability; and hence, all of those will be the scalpers' paradise, provided there are enough of them keeping up with these activities to drain retailers of stock.
View at TechPowerUp Main Site
