NVIDIA GTC 2025 Merchandise Truck Slinging Limited Quantities of GeForce RTX 5090 & 5080 Cards

[T0@st]

Yesterday evening, the NVIDIA AI Developer social media account sent out a red alert regarding a time limited sale of flagship-tier Blackwell gaming hardware: "GeForce RTX 5090s are available at the Gear Store in the park right now at GTC 2025. 90 units are available for the next 30 minutes, with more coming tomorrow. Come say hi!" PC hardware news outlets have picked up on Team Green's latest stock bulletin, with Tom's Hardware disclosing some extra details. Under normal circumstances, NVIDIA's Gear Store Mobile Truck would be selling fairly standard merchandise—e.g. T-shirts, sweaters, hats, etc. According to the latest reports, the company's mobile pop-up store is taking orders for add-in-boards (AIB) GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 models. An information placard advertises old school/launch day guide prices of $1999 and $999 (respectively).

Tom's Hardware noted several caveats: "the graphics cards must be purchased from NVIDIA's van from 7 AM to 12 PM on Thursday or Friday and then picked up at South Hall main entrance the same day. The graphics boards are available to conference pass ($1145 for one day, or $2295 for five days) and exhibit pass holders only; with a limit of one card per person." According to folks on the ground, Team Green and its board partners have stockpiled a thousand of each highly-desirable GPU model at the San Jose Convention Center. The first waves of time-limited batches were made available yesterday (March 19). Demand for flagship and top-end GeForce RTX 50 series cards has far exceeded supply, starting back in late January. Following an absorption of plentiful feedback, NVIDIA revived its "Verified Priority Access" scheme a couple of weeks ago. This anti-scalping initiative was advertised as offering: "a limited number of verified GeForce gamers and creators in the United States the opportunity to purchase one GeForce RTX 5090 or RTX 5080 Founders Edition graphics card from the NVIDIA Marketplace."



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[hsew]

So in essence you spend 1145+2000 for a GPU and flip it on eBay for 5000.

 

[neatfeatguy]

This convention thing is going to pull in at least $40mil from entry fees and GPU sales alone, if the estimated 25K attend that are expected to.

Nothing like getting your hands on a GPU that Nvidia is scalping themselves instead of going to ebay for one.....
A 5080 is going to cost you $2145 or $3295.
A 5090 is going to cost you $3145 or $4295.

 

[bonehead123]

I hope they have some heavily-armed, Hulkster-sized security peoples at/near/around those places, cause all it would take would be 1 mass robbery to occur, and within minutes/seconds, the average retail/etail prices would skyrocket to $5-6k....and ebay would probably have a bunch of them for ~$7-8k.

Who knows, maybe that's nGreeediya's plan anyways........

Yea I know that sounds harsh, but given how much crap they've already pulled in the past 2 generations, I wouldn't put it past them, just like the good ole "factory flood/fire" thingy from back in the ram/cpu/nand "shortage" days...

 

[Visible Noise]

This convention thing is going to pull in at least $40mil from entry fees and GPU sales alone, if the estimated 25K attend that are expected to.

Nothing like getting your hands on a GPU that Nvidia is scalping themselves instead of going to ebay for one.....
A 5080 is going to cost you $2145 or $3295.
A 5090 is going to cost you $3145 or $4295.

Most people attending vendor conferences get their admission paid for by the presenting vendor. Then go look up how much it costs to rent a convention center for a couple of weeks, and how much the companies that actually run the convention are paid. This isn’t some kind of highly profitable venture

 

[Hecate91]

A thousand 5080 and 5090 cards,probably more than the whole launch of 5080 and 5090 cards that sold in the US. And these cards are only available to those in the industry, interesting how much crap Nvidia has pulled with this gen of GPU's.

 

[wolf]

A thousand 5080 and 5090 cards,probably more than the whole launch of 5080 and 5090 cards that sold in the US

Citation needed.

 

[hsew]

I hope they have some heavily-armed, Hulkster-sized security peoples at/near/around those places, cause all it would take would be 1 mass robbery to occur, and within minutes/seconds, the average retail/etail prices would skyrocket to $5-6k....and ebay would probably have a bunch of them for ~$7-8k.

Who knows, maybe that's nGreeediya's plan anyways........

Yea I know that sounds harsh, but given how much crap they've already pulled in the past 2 generations, I wouldn't put it past them, just like the good ole "factory flood/fire" thingy from back in the ram/cpu/nand "shortage" days...

In all fairness, the 30 series launched during a spike in demand for crypto mining and then COVID shut down half the world a few months later, causing supplies to evaporate. When the 3050 launched, nVidia realized they really could charge whatever they wanted and hasn't looked back since.

 

[Visible Noise]

A thousand 5080 and 5090 cards,probably more than the whole launch of 5080 and 5090 cards that sold in the US. And these cards are only available to those in the industry, interesting how much crap Nvidia has pulled with this gen of GPU's.

No luck finding one?

 

[Caring1]

A thousand 5080 and 5090 cards,probably more than the whole launch of 5080 and 5090 cards that sold in the US. And these cards are only available to those in the industry, interesting how much crap Nvidia has pulled with this gen of GPU's.

Nvidia and Retailers. Here in Australia it's just about impossible to find them unless you want a pre-built system at a ridiculous price.

 

[Chris_Ramseyer]

I didn't see the sign outside until Thursday during the day. The news reports went live that day or night. Someone else from Phison and I went over around 7:30 and 8 AM. All 5090s were gone by then, and security said people started lining up at 3 AM. We managed to get a 5080, but my colleague who arrived at 8 was one of the last four to get a ticket. Nearly everyone at GTC has connections inside the industry, i.e., know someone we can call to get access to GPUs, but with this launch, even our very well-connected friends are not a lot of help. It's a crazy GPU market out there.

I doubt many of these cards will go to auction or be scalped. Everyone I talked to is excited to try the new cards and plans to keep them for gaming and AI testing.