Everyone has long known that the situation on the graphics card market and especially on Ebay has been unprecedented (bad) for months, as can be seen recently in the case of the RTX 3060. But if you stumble across a picture from your desk while doing research, like me, the degree of absurdity increases again.
Which photo is it about? It is a picture of my graphics card test system that I took for our release article including benchmarks for Nvidia’s Geforce RTX 3080. You can find it right at the beginning of the following test:
more on the subject
RTX 3080 – Benchmarks against RTX 2080 Ti and RX 5700 XT
Obviously the Ebay user isme_de2015 stumbled upon this picture. So far he has it in four different auctions for a total of almost 4,000 dollars
To be clear again: He doesn’t use the picture to sell a real Geforce RTX 3080, he sells the picture himself. A process that we were able to observe months ago, but what is it all about?
About the author: Nils Raettig has been the hardware editor at GameStar since October 2013. His tasks include testing processors and graphics cards, and he will soon hand over the GPU tests to his valued colleague Alexander Köpf. He also likes to handle numbers outside of gaming benchmarks, most recently in the case of the evaluation of our large survey on the graphics cards of GameStar readers. At the same time, he doesn’t need a new graphics card so quickly in his private life because League of Legends is known to run smoothly on a pocket calculator.
“No people allowed!”
The seller himself states in the description text of the auctions that he wants to annoy bot buyers with the offer. It says, among other things, as follows:
“DO NOT BID HERE UNLESS YOU ARE A BOT!
DO NOT BUY THIS IF YOU ARE HUMAN !! DO NOT BID HERE !!!
NO PEOPLE ALLOWED!
This is not a real RTX 3080 GPU card. I am only selling the picture! I created this post to see if BOTS keep buying them and scamming ordinary people just willing to play games. ”
It is not clear from the information whether he will donate the proceeds to a good cause. I doubt it. Also to consider: Alleged bot buyers will defend themselves against the payment once they realize that they have only bought a picture and not a graphics card (thanks to the legitimate information in the comments).
How I stumbled across the picture – and how it continues
What at first sounds like a new anecdote of the current graphics card madness has a far more informative background. Because that I came across the offer is due to our large price overview of old and new graphics cards on Ebay:
more on the subject
GPU prices on Ebay: Over 20 models in comparison
I am currently working on an update for this article and can already tell you at this point, that the numbers are very remarkable from my point of view.
The number of graphics cards on offer has increased significantly compared to our first analysis in January 2021, as the following overview shows.
Graphics card offers on Ebay
Comparison of the amount of search results
- Mid-March 2021
- End of January 2021
Geforce GTX 1070
Nvidia
1854
1455
Geforce GTX 1060 (6 GByte)
Nvidia
1753
1039
Geforce RTX 3070
Nvidia
1587
1237
Radeon RX 580 (8 GByte)
AMD
1395
743
Geforce RTX 3080
Nvidia
1302
1208
Radeon RX 5700 XT
AMD
1155
559
Geforce GTX 1080
Nvidia
1104
862
Geforce RTX 2080
Nvidia
963
355
Geforce GTX 1080 Ti
Nvidia
931
820
Geforce RTX 3090
Nvidia
651
479
Geforce RTX 2080 Ti
Nvidia
629
667
Geforce RTX 2060
Nvidia
609
289
Geforce RTX 2070 Super
Nvidia
554
554
Radeon RX 570 (4 GByte)
AMD
489
266
Radeon RX Vega 56
AMD
371
174
Radeon RX Vega 64
AMD
280
140
Geforce RTX 2080 Super
Nvidia
246
284
Radeon RX 5700
AMD
236
132
Geforce RTX 2060 Super
Nvidia
226
219
Radeon RX 6900 XT
AMD
150
66
Radeon RX 6800
AMD
127
100
Radeon RX 6800 XT
AMD
115
142
Overall, the number of offers has grown from just under 12,000 to almost 17,000 since the end of January 2021. This also includes auctions where you cannot buy a graphics card at all, as in the case described here. But the development is clear.
More details from my analysis should make it to our website tomorrow, on March 9th, in the form of a suitable article. You should be curious – even if I have to admit that, as expected, I won’t have any good news.
