Set your future hardware price expectations accordingly, it's going to suck for a long time.
Yeah, I have my doubts that GPU pricing is ever going to go back to the "old normal" any time soon, or even in my lifetime (I'm in my late 40s).
Best find the deals that you can.
A lot of people are saying that prices are going to crash, come Apr-May of 2022 (the scheduled ETH "Merge", aka turning off PoW/mining), but I have my doubts about that too. They said that about EIP-1559 too, and things haven't changed dramatically. I think that other coins are going to be mineable, and barring any drastic regulations, miners wishing to expand their farms will snatch up cheaper used cards once miners with higher electric rates start to sell off, and thus keep prices even on the used market fairly high, I agree, "at least (old) MSRP". Things won't be like the last crash we had.
Ultimately, it's your choice, OP, but if the question were one of:
1) Don't buy a GPU, until prices drop to "old MSRP", or
2) Buy a GPU at inflated MSRP from a retailer, or even an ebay scalper, and mine with it for six months to defer the cost partially or even in some cases completely,
I know which option that I would choose. Why wait? Life it too short for waiting, or in general terms, "Austerity".