There's no scalping here, it's just that the world has changed. Since 2016 when the last generation of "well-priced" Nvidia GPUS (10-series) existed there have been a bunch of things that happened to the "$350" card.
- Inflation has increased prices by 27% in the last 8 years.
- We've had the ETH mining boom disrupt pricing in favour of GPU manufacturers, the same is now happening for AI.
- We've had a pandemic cause a massive shift in the market demand for GPUs because dramatically more people are gaming and working at home with them than pre-pandemic.
- We've had a change in the cost of labour in Taiwan and China from government labour laws. Exploiting people for profit isn't happening so badly now - which ends up adding cost.
- There are ongoing economic sanctions on exports driving up the cost of components sourced from all over China
- The cost of shipping containers to distribute GPUs globally has increased by 26% above inflation, for a cumulative increase of 60% higher shipping costs.
Each of those six bullet points accounts for a non-trivial reason for GPU cost increases. The first bullet point (inflation) alone means that a $379 GTX 1070 in 2016 would cost $479 today. It's honestly incredible what you can build for $1000 these days, not just in terms of technological progress and the expectations of how a game should look and run, but also because today's $1000 budget is equivalent to a $785 budget from 2016 when you account for just the inflation alone. We were getting 1080p60, PS3-quality DX9 graphics back then for $1000, which is more like $1270 in today's money. Today we're getting 1080p144 or 1440p60 PS5-quality graphics for $1000, effectively only $785 in 2016's money. The games have become more demanding, the resolution and refresh rates have increased, the expectations are higher, and yet the budget is smaller.
The only reason it sucks is because global inflation and cost increases are outpacing global worker wages, which isn't a GPU-market only problem, it's called "the cost of living crisis" and it's on every news outlet in every country on earth, as it has been for at least a couple of years now.
You are obviously not wrong that the costs increased, however rounded the calcuations are.
The thing is that the prices are no longer linked to the manufacturing costs, the mining craze showed the CEOs and boards how much people were willing to pay ... So they WILL pay.
Look how Nvidia prices their 'AI' products currently, with markups running in 1000s % . Why? Because they can, so they are.
This is just a normal, greedy corporation with no appetite limits on profit, the shares must go up and the sales targets are not going down. Nvidia totally dominates the gpu sales (effectively a monopoly) , dictate the prices and is solely responsible for how the current market looks like.
Nvidia does not deserve to be defended by graphics cards buyers because Nvidia doesn't act in their interest. Nvidia is not your friend, nor is any corporation, especially with dominant market position, they are all just looking to exploit you.
AMD is obviously also a corporation and chase mostly profits too but their market power is just incomparable.
If they decreased the prices, Nvidia would just follow ( if profits and/or dominant position is threatened), as a result both would make less. Therefore, AMD prefers to play small games and tries not get nVidia too angry, whilst making some cash on side, dreaming (or planning) of hitting a jackpot with some AI, superb CPU line or similar product.
Being 'the smaller one', in monopolistic or oligopolistic conditions is super hard.
GPU market needs a revolutionary product from either Intel, AMD or... someone else, such as Ryzen was, in order to shift the powers and make the market a bit healthier. Otherwise, get ready for constant price increases because they maximum price is the price you are willing to pay.
However bad it sounds, buying Nvidia gpu sends them signals that it's still ok to sting you that much...and they will try more on their next release.
Btw I own Nvidia card (certainly my last one from this maker) and I am not an AMD unconditional lover, I just say how I see it and how it is.
