Question Scalping is bad, mmmm'k Newegg?

UsandThem

Elite Member
May 4, 2000
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I propose a new law of the internet @VirtualLarry 's Law of the Internet: All conversations involving GPUs will always decay into a discussion about mining. Larry's Law for short, has a nice alliterative ring to it.

I am curious to see how this Christmas season goes. Normally manufacturers would be increasing orders to prepare for the sales volume, but if everyone is already tapped out I suspect prices are going to go gangbusters on everything as Mom's can't find little Timmy the 3080Ti he wanted so she goes and gets him the 6700XT or 6600XT that is actually there on the shelf.

I would assume the first wave of "price drops" are going to show up in February/March of 2022.

Just talking out my ass here, don't mind me.
Maybe we need at least one of these in every mining related thread on our forums?

88.png

:p
 

Markfw

Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
May 16, 2002
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I am surprised you would say this since you are so into distributed computing. You are entitled to your opinion of course, but still it surprises me.

Miners aren't the only reason for the lack of GPUs, and they do serve a purpose for those cryptos running PoW. So they make more sense than say, scalpers, or retailers who scalp. Also, there are different sorts of miners. There are large mining farms, which I think we should limit, but there are also small time miners as well. Many miners only mine on a single GPU when not gaming. Sort of a side income.

As we transition to PoS and such more, miners will play a lesser role of course.

Anyway, people who don't understand crypto are the scum of the earth.
First... I don't JUST do distributed computing, I help research cancer, nothing else. And I am "scum of the earth" since I don't understand crypto ? Tell that to the millions of gamers, and people like me who use video cards in a reasonable manner, instead of using all the natural resources of the earth to make money.

I say again, miners are scum of the earth.
 

Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
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Oh, I understand it, I just don't agree with trashing all of our natural resources to make money.

I think you've got issues with a lot of people beyond crypto miners. I mean actual miners for starters. And probably everyone who didn't live in a grass hut for the last 200 years.

Personally I don't think the argument against miners wasting resources is a good one. If it were truly wasteful and had no value, people wouldn't freely spend money on it.

The bigger problem is that the argument also applies to gaming. Compared to using a GPU for cancer research, gaming on it isn't any better than mining with it.

More generally even if I did think mining was completely awful I still wouldn't want to ban it because I'm really not going to like it when someone else decides gaming (or something else I enjoy) is awful and uses that same reasoning and precedent to ban the things I think I should be free to do.

Mining isn't even inherently wasteful or destructive of natural resources. Using excess wind or solar power to mine does no further environmental damage and using the waste heat it normally produces in lieu of just running an electrical heater during the winter months or places where it's really cold at night makes far more economic sense than using electricity or other fossil fuels to produce heat.
 

CP5670

Diamond Member
Jun 24, 2004
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I support mining for the reasons others stated, but most individuals are better off investing in coins or crypto companies than mining at this point. Mining is just not that profitable anymore unless you make a real business out of it and can scale it up to a lot of cards, and there are too many people doing it now. It's only worth it if you bought the card for games and mine to make some money back.
 
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GodisanAtheist

Diamond Member
Nov 16, 2006
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I'm not sure it's possible to express how amazing this image is. Did you draw it? Regarding Larry's Law, I think it could literally be true. If a GPU conversation is short and about something specific, then mining likely won't come up. However, if that conversation were to be artificially extended, then certainly it would decay into a discussion about mining. This is like zooming out on a graph. It looks a certain way up close, but zooming out shows the trend. It's also like a convergent infinite series in math. The sums of many terms occur for a very long time, but it all converges on a single number. In this case, the convergence of a conversation about GPUs on the topic of mining is described by Larry's Law. This is now a science.

-Ok, Modification on Larry's Law: All internet discussions regarding GPUs, given enough time, will decay into a discussion regarding mining.

Added the time element. Signed, sealed, delivered.

 
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Insert_Nickname

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aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
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dude not even microcenter is immune to it.

I paid for a RX6900XT i bought from the store direct back in 12/20/20 for 1149.00

That exact card is 1849.00 now at microcenter...

700 dollar markup just because they can. And this is Microcenter... the place we all Toot that has great combo prices, and sorts on PC.

There is scalping on all levels.
Its not just newegg.

They need the money, to pay there employees more then what EDD gives out in unemployment.
 
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NickelPlate

Senior member
Nov 9, 2006
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As much as the current situation sucks, I can't really blame anyone, it just is what it is because of a perfect storm.

  1. Regardless of how you feel about Crypto, a lot of people are making huge sums of cash on it legally or at least trying, can't really say that I blame them but it's driving the mining industry to continue at a fevered pace and the miners are still profiting as well. Can't say that I blame them either.
  2. Retailers are taking advantage of the huge deficit in the supply coupled with the huge demand and marking GPUs up into the stratosphere, and people/miners are buying them. Can't really blame them either, they're in business to make money, period. If you could buy a 3090 today and turn around and sell it to your neighbor for 3X would you decline? What if you could buy 100 of them and triple all that money? As much as I want a better gfx card, I'm not sure I could refuse as long as it's legal.
  3. Massive semiconductor demand and suppliers are unable to keep up. This isn't just graphics cards it's everything with electronics, autos, phones you name it. Parts and material shortages are very real and unprecedented right now. I work for an electronics manufacturing company and our machines are turned off more often than not because we're waiting on parts. We even had to no bid certain jobs because we can't get the parts. On top of that we have a Pandemic further fueling the shortages. Companies simply can't make enough product keep up.
None of this stuff is illegal even though we might despise the practices people are using to buy and sell GPUs and what their motives are. The only thing I have a problem with is the use of bots to buy up entire supplies and then people posting pictures and being braggarts about it. But since there is no law against it, what can you do? And again can you blame the retailers for not cracking down on the bots? They're making $$$ hand over fist so they don't care who they sell to. The definition of "scalping" is kind of a gray area. Is it scalping or just business? Who's to blame the seller asking outrageous $$$ or the buyer willing to pay it?

What the future holds is anyone's guess. Will PC gaming eventually die out or become a hobby for the rich and wealthy? I hope not but I do wonder. Good thing I have other hobbies besides gaming that I can occupy my time with. I may just have to go back to reading more books or watching TV for awhile until things settle out.
 

Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
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What'd you expect? They know selling for less just means a bot swarm sucking everything up in a matter of seconds that are resold at a similarly marked-up price anyway. Maybe one lucky little boy or girl actually gets the good price, but most are getting flipped.

Even the brick and mortars realize that at the price difference between MSRP and market value that it's more than financially viable to pay a bunch of people just to stand in line. The people who can most afford to do that are the miners themselves since it's not like they have anywhere else they need to be.

I could get if it were some doe eyed gamer that stumbled in to all of this, but we know that you mine Larry. You know full well what this card is actually worth so why are you surprised that someone else has figured it out?
 
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Feb 4, 2009
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Heres the thing guys and it sucks. Market prices for cards in general is 2 to 3x what it should be or sticker price.
Someone is going to make that money wether it is newegg or microcenter or bestbuy or amazon or whomever the seller is the choice is sell at its sticker price and accept many will go to miners or ebay sellers whom will make a profit off the low cost or mark the cards up and keep the money.
Personally I do not think it is neweggs responsibility to ensure some random has a successful “ebay” reselling business. The ebay guy is a bottom feeder and adds no value to the process. I would rather newegg keep the margin and some opportunistic tick.
 

UsandThem

Elite Member
May 4, 2000
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I could get if it were some doe eyed gamer that stumbled in to all of this, but we know that you mine Larry. You know full well what this card is actually worth so why are you surprised that someone else has figured it out?
Miners be like:

giphy.gif



:p
 

Insert_Nickname

Diamond Member
May 6, 2012
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None of this stuff is illegal even though we might despise the practices people are using to buy and sell GPUs and what their motives are. The only thing I have a problem with is the use of bots to buy up entire supplies and then people posting pictures and being braggarts about it. But since there is no law against it, what can you do? And again can you blame the retailers for not cracking down on the bots? They're making $$$ hand over fist so they don't care who they sell to. The definition of "scalping" is kind of a gray area. Is it scalping or just business? Who's to blame the seller asking outrageous $$$ or the buyer willing to pay it?

Yup. Just business.

Slightly OT, I've just seen an SD card with a 1000% markup. That's what I call professionals.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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I could get if it were some doe eyed gamer that stumbled in to all of this, but we know that you mine Larry. You know full well what this card is actually worth so why are you surprised that someone else has figured it out?
Well, the card in the OP only has 4GB, so it CAN'T MINE ETH, the currently most-profitable coin. So these are not really the object of the miner's eye, as far as card purchases go. (*)

It can mine RVN, so that's probably why, I didn't notice the "Super" originally, the card that I purchased for $255 a few months ago was the GTX 1650 Gaming X (non-Super) variant. Apparently, the "Super" can mine RVN a little bit better than the regular.

There was a YT video put out, about the best cards to buy and the best method to spec-mine RVN, in order to become a millionaire in two years, if the coin went from $0.10 to $10.00 (which it well may, I hope that it does). The procedure essentially involved buying like 6-8 GTX 1650 Super cards, and building a rig, and letting it sit on RVN for two years.

I have a server chassis with five GTX 1660 ti cards, which can also mine RVN fairly well, I've been temped to go that route with them (spec-mine RVN directly), rather than mine ETH with NH for BTC. It would reduce my short-term earnings by a bit, but it might be really profitable down the line.

(*) Edit: To add, getting a few RX 6600XT cards at release, for $400-500 would seem to be a nearly infinitely-better choice of cards to buy. Roughly the same price as these GTX 1650 Super cards,. mines better / more efficiently, and games better, for around the same price point.

Although, the GTX 1650 Super IS AVAILABLE, which is more than can be said for some cards.
 
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Anderegg

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Mar 24, 2012
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B&H had a 3080 Ti in stock a few hours ago (at $300 less than the lowest eBay scalper listing)...I would have pulled the trigger on it if I had not just bought a 3080 Ti from an eBay scalper. The B&H price was $2000 no tax, the scalping price was $1900 after tax and shipping. I have an MSI GTX 1080 Ti Duke OC to be replaced, which is selling for $650 average curently on eScalp. After selling my 1080 Ti for a lot more than I paid for it 3+ years ago, and factoring in eBay 13% fee ($1900-$600=1300otd), I am in the end owning a 3080 Ti for MSRP+tax and losing an old GTX 1080 Ti that would have been worth exactly how much if there were no scalping issues and 3080's were in the wild for $500 used a year after release?

Sometimes you need to look at the big picture of how something economically effects you.

Pau

Screen Shot 2021-08-21 at 2.42.55 PM.png
 
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B&H had a 3080 Ti in stock a few hours ago (at $300 less than the lowest eBay scalper listing)...I would have pulled the trigger on it if I had not just bought a 3080 Ti from an eBay scalper. The B&H price was $2000 no tax, the scalping price was $1900 after tax and shipping. I have an MSI GTX 1080 Ti Duke OC to be replaced, which is selling for $650 average curently on eScalp. After selling my 1080 Ti for a lot more than I paid for it 3+ years ago, and factoring in eBay 13% fee ($1900-$600=1300otd), I am in the end owning a 3080 Ti for MSRP+tax and losing an old GTX 1080 Ti that would have been worth exactly how much if there were no scalping issues and 3080's were in the wild for $500 used a year after release?

Sometimes you need to look at the big picture of how something economically effects you.

Pau

View attachment 49142

BTW, I have had two video cards fail on me and both were Asus cards.
 

SteveGrabowski

Diamond Member
Oct 20, 2014
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Miners creating a rising tide that lifts all gpu prices up. Think I'm done with PC gaming once my Haswell 4C/8T Xeon and 1660 Super aren't enough to run new games well at 1080p (probably not too far off judging how crappy the cpu runs Cyberpunk).
 

Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
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Honestly were probably not too far off from APUs being able to do a decent job at 1080p so as long as you're not expecting 120 FPS or anything like that it's going to be easy to have a cheap rig for a more casual PC gaming experience.

Eventually there will be a downturn (or maybe even a bust) and it'll be possible to get a new gaming PC without spending a mint, but when exactly that happens is anyone's guess.
 
Feb 4, 2009
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Miners creating a rising tide that lifts all gpu prices up. Think I'm done with PC gaming once my Haswell 4C/8T Xeon and 1660 Super aren't enough to run new games well at 1080p (probably not too far off judging how crappy the cpu runs Cyberpunk).

My 1660ti works awesome at 1050P. I have no interest in Cyberpunk but lets be real Cyberpunk is current day Crysis, does it run excellent on ANY machine?
 

CP5670

Diamond Member
Jun 24, 2004
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dude not even microcenter is immune to it.

I paid for a RX6900XT i bought from the store direct back in 12/20/20 for 1149.00

That exact card is 1849.00 now at microcenter...

700 dollar markup just because they can. And this is Microcenter... the place we all Toot that has great combo prices, and sorts on PC.

Last time I was there, they were charging $2600 for these. They weren't even selling, the shelves were full of them.
 

Jaskalas

Lifer
Jun 23, 2004
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I ended up paying $1400 for a 3060Ti this past spring. (It came with an entire PC at an overall fair price tho)

Go prebuilt during a "sale"... or dig deep.
 

aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
Super Moderator
Sep 28, 2005
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Last time I was there, they were charging $2600 for these. They weren't even selling, the shelves were full of them.

ugh that's completely insane....
Its so easy to kill scaplers on the vendor side.

Just don't honor Warrenty or RMA, unless you have the real recipt, and you can provide a copy of the card used with all but the last 4 digits covered up.
This way if the name doesn't match the RMA, the vendor WONT honor it.

Id like to see how many cards sell then from scalpers knowing full well, you won't have any warranty on the card.