We all know by now that Scalping has become one of the most frustrating things to happen lately, which in turn has affected and disrupted the whole PC hardware and the console gaming market as well. Scalpers had the opportunity to buy a product for the sole purpose of just making a profit off of it, and more specifically for selling it at a much higher price than the initial MSRP.
Due to the Covid-19 global pandemic, many customers, gamers, enthusiasts and others have been forced to stay indoors, work/play from home, and so because of this, the demand for the latest gaming and other hardware accessories has seen unprecedented growth recently.
Buying a new GPU, CPU, gaming console, or any other related hardware has been nearly impossible at least at the MSRP rate set by the companies, be it AMD, INTEL, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Sony, DELL and others.
Because of this global trend, recently one Data Engineer Michael Driscoll from DEV.TO decided to do an in-depth analysis to see just how much money these scalpers have made off recently. Driscoll wrote a script to scrape all of eBay’s sold listings, and graph them accordingly to get an insight into this whole scalping process.
His recent analysis focuses on the AMD Ryzen 5000 (codenames as Vermeer) processor lineup scalping situation. Although pricing has somewhat stabilized over the past few months or so, AMD’s Ryzen 5000 chips are still selling way over their MSRP value.
To first quickly summarize the results, scalpers have sold a total of 8,720 Zen 3 processors on eBay alone, which is equivalent to $5,880,472 in sales on Ebay. Moreover, the scalping process in return gave $946k in profit to scalpers and $625k to eBay/PayPal alone. These figures are no doubt staggering.
Going into more details, the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X was the most sought after GPU for scalping due to its lower pricing, and better price to performance ratio. As per Driscoll’s numbers, scalpers have sold up to a total of 3,204 units of the Ryzen 5 5600X SKU, which amounts to roughly a 36.7% ratio of the total number of sold processors on eBay.
However, the Ryzen 9 5900X flagship CPU on the other hand, despite only selling 1,962 units, helped scalpers make up to $459,256 in profit, which equals to 48.5% of the total profit, and is the highest scalping figure in the Ryzen 5000-series CPU lineup.
According to analyst Michael Driscoll, Zen 3 pricing has overall stabilized well above the profitability cutoff for scalper, however, the Ryzen 5800X is still selling 25% above MSRP, the 5950X and 5900X are 40% more expensive, and the 5600X is selling 30% over MSRP with a slight downward trend.
Scalpers have recently chosen a new venue/outlet for selling these SKUs, which is StockX, which happens to be a very unusual marketplace to sell hardware, since StockX is mostly popular for stuff like watches, sneakers, streetwear and bags. But they also sell electronics.
Moreover, StockX only has a 3% selling charge fee, which makes it even more appealing than eBay which wants 13% of the profit. Scalpers have been reselling Ryzen 5000 processors on StockX at lower prices due to the smaller fee. If we compare both these marketplaces, the average selling price for the Ryzen 9 5900X on StockX is $758, while the same processor on eBay is sold for $800 (median pricing).
Lastly, Driscoll also discovered that the Zen+ and Zen 2 series of processors have also increased in price by approximately 33% and 25%, respectively. The real outliers are the Ryzen 3 3100 and 3300X, which jumped closer to 45% of their previous price.
He suspects this is due to buyers having their whole system ready to build except for the CPU, and just buying something to tide themselves over until they could get the Zen 3 CPU they desire. So basically these older gen Ryzen processors have been acting as a stopgap solution for the time being.
Original Zen CPU prices don’t seem to be affected though.
- 5600X Cumulative Sales/Profits
- 5800X Cumulative Sales/Profits
- 5900X Cumulative Sales/Profits
- 5950X Cumulative Sales/Profits
- Zen+ Median Pricing
- Zen Median Pricing
Scalping actually works based on the economy’s supply and demand ratio; and when the supply is low and demand is too high, scalpers can make huge profits, and take undue advantage of this market trend.
Michael Driscoll’s graphs aren’t based on actual prices, but rather on percentages, with each product’s MSRP being taken as the baseline. This makes reading these graphs and charts a bit easier.
Stay tuned for more tech news!
Hello, my name is NICK Richardson. I’m an avid PC and tech fan since the good old days of RIVA TNT2, and 3DFX interactive “Voodoo” gaming cards. I love playing mostly First-person shooters, and I’m a die-hard fan of this FPS genre, since the good ‘old Doom and Wolfenstein days.
MUSIC has always been my passion/roots, but I started gaming “casually” when I was young on Nvidia’s GeForce3 series of cards. I’m by no means an avid or a hardcore gamer though, but I just love stuff related to the PC, Games, and technology in general. I’ve been involved with many indie Metal bands worldwide, and have helped them promote their albums in record labels. I’m a very broad-minded down to earth guy. MUSIC is my inner expression, and soul.
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Can not wait until Scalpers gone do the same thing with “drugs” , “Food and water” !!
Scalping essentials is actually illegal is vigorously prosecuted. CPUs, not so much.
Ahahah!! Like if any fcking crooked government would do something to address it!!! LMAO
They actually do when it is something essential. The penalties are rather steep.
LOL those two idiot brothers should’ve been shot publicly. In China they would have as well.
And toilet paper as well. Why in the world would people hoard toilet paper? Really they were hoarding everything. It wasn’t clear if grocery stores were going to shut down long term. The Publix that I shop at shut down for a week and half when Covid hit. I think the mayor made them reopen. They had a sign on the door saying shut down indefinitely.
As far as drugs go the drug companies are the scalpers here in the USA. They charge more to Americans than for what they sell to other countries. Some drugs cost thousands of dollars. My emergency room bill was $5,300 for x-rays and seeing a doctor for 10 minutes total.
I have really good insurance and they reduced the bill to $1,000 of which I had to pay $100. I have read where a 7 hour operation can cost $250,000. I don’t know how people get medical care without insurance. You can bankrupt on medical bills but only once every 7 years.
This sucks pretty bad though.
I had a 3080 in my cart two days ago. I sat and waited for 20 minutes trying to get through the checkout. When the site finally loaded, it was to late.
It sucks when sites don’t reserve it for you while it’s on your cart. It could be some 10min reserve.
Very annoying especially on Black Friday when bots are mass buying every good deal with their instant order form filling
I don’t expect things to get better until 2022. 🙁
Yup, it won’t
Intel might shuffle things a bit. Maybe.
Can someone answer me this. Why can’t scalping be BANNED from the Internet ? Why can’t companies like AMD, NVidia, and other Marketplaces like Ebay check for scalping ?
Why can’t they take action if any of their products is selling way over the MSRP ? Is it because they can’t control the scalpers ? Which is absurd if you ask me, because this can be controlled and checked, imo.
So EBAY wants a share of pie, so they allow any product to sell at a higher price tag ? This means this whole scapler bot situation is intentional ?
What happened to those preventive measure which both AMD and NV promised to gamers ? They failed pretty hard on this, which is a damn shame if u ask me.
But anyways, FOOLS and idiots are ready to pay a Premium price for any product, so scalpers have been taking undue advantage of this whole situation.
One word. Capitalism.
Profit, no matter what.
The same reason Sony does nothing about it. A sale is a sale. They do not care about anything but profit. Companies do not have morals or have a sense of right or wrong.
There is no such thing as a bad sale. There is only a sale.
One word, Capitalism.
Our system is built on screwing each other as much as possible.
Damn, you beat me to it.
Spare me your communist whining. People will always take advantage of other people but you children always need some authority to come save you. Does it suck? Yeah, it does, but if you actually work at it you can find them. Also we are talking about a product that lets you play video games, not any necessity of life so spare me the “muh Capitalism” marxist cult dramatics. We are living in a time a men children, and arrested development.
Everyday he cries about capitalism ?
Do I? Please, show me where.
Well i can be fair, every other day 😉
I was making a simple statement, and a true one at that, but I guess you’re reading comprehension is completely impaired by going full duchebag in the comment section like you’re some kind of superior being or something. But, whatever. You do you, even if be you is to be a drooling cockwomble.
Because you are spouting the insane beliefs of a dangerous cult known as marxism and it should be called out like a fool preaching Scientology. You need to mature more before spouting off simpleton garbage which boils down to “its not fair”. Grow up and realize you are whining about not getting a part for a video game, while marxism has killed millions of people. More than any other ideology.
Imbecile brainwashed by decades of Western pro-capitalitst propaganda detected. If we start counting victims of capitalism you’d shrink down to the size of a peanut.
You are a low iq child who is a cultist for a toddler ideology. You can’t even argue without using your laughable cult’s terminology of “capitalism”. Can you argue anything without some insane cult term your cult leader Marx invented. You idiots are worse than Scientologists. The free market system has brought more people out of poverty further and faster than any other system that ever existed. I mean for Christ sake you are arguing for your cult on a message board about video game components. What a laughable, priveledged little cult toddler if that is your biggest struggle in life that put you in the arms of the marxist cult. Grow the hell up.
Listen, your literal handle is “Hatriot”. So no wonder you wouldn’t give any documented proof to your bigoted unabated hatred.
Got any proof of that? Many people despite being long in the tooth never grow up of being a dumb teenager. I think you’re living proof of that.
This would happen in any economic system with a market.
This problem isn’t exclusive to capitalism at all.
Because nobody care, mostly the f*cking sh*t governments around the world… THIS is a perfect example of the suhuman greed…
Because nobody care, mostly the f*cking sh*t governments around the world… THIS is a perfect example of the suhuman greed…
I guess those companies just count the units sold not the number of cards that end up in the hands of actual gamers.
“Can someone answer me this” NO
Because all sides still make money of course … Its up to us now not to be a FOMO person in order to get that scalpers away, or at least make them live with a bunch of unsold stock
It’s a repeat of the Pascals. That situation never did get resolved and it could very well carry over to the next generation after the Amperes.
Huang is just saying the same things he said back then “we’re ramping up to full production” and promising that the situation will improve while knowing full well that it’s not going to happen.They can only get so much capacity from TSMC and he has already said that there is a shortage PCBs and components for the cards also.
I hope they’ll get cancer
This is not looking good for us, regular gamers.
Thanks to the idiots who spend double the price of these products so they can proudly brag about their idiocy on the internet
idiots deserve it.
But we are suffering bcoz of em idiots…the people with brains who are not r3t4rd3d to buy at such ridiculous prices on eBay!
For the record, I followed Falcodrin’s livestream on YouTube and he gives live updates on inventory. It took a few days but he let everyone know that amddirect.com had some in stock and I scored a 5600x thanks to him. Yes they sold out in seconds but inventory is getting out just slowly. If you can spend the time, you can get one.
Remember folks: The easiest way to stop scalpers is to simply not buy from them. Let them suffer by leaving them with CPU’s that they can’t sell at above MSRP.
Unfortunately some desperate peeps are still going to buy these regardless of the price tag, IMO.
I watched one seller on Ebay that had 9 RTX 3080s for $1,100 each. Within 2 hours they had sold all of them. So yeah, a lot of people are still buying them.
People could be using these CPUs for work so they can recover the cost.
In some cases it’s the only way to get hardware especially Ampere GPUs if you don’t want to wait a long time. 3080s are being sold for $1,300 to $2,,000 on Ebay.
It’s going to be the same with the next generation too. Coronavirus isn’t going away.The drug companies are working hard to get enough vaccines out there but now I’m hearing about a new strain of the virus that is even more contagious that the present vaccines don’t work on. The medical facilities are swamped I had to go to to emergency room last month and I had to wait 6 hours to see a Doctor.
I saw one commenter on this site saying had to wait for 3 months on a waiting list for his RTX 3080 buying at MSRP.
Damn, is the new strain more deadly ? I heard it’s only confined to the UK for now ? Why did you go to the emergency room last month ?
I hope all is well now ?
Tripped over a coffee table in the dark and cracked my neck. I was concerned that I might have spine damage so I wanted to have some x-rays taken. I didn’t do anything like that but my neck was sore for about a month.
It’s going spread though. I read a couple of weeks ago that the UK may decide to go on quarantine.
PLANDEMIC* Buddy. If this was a “Pandemic” people wouldn’t be out, about doing their everyday. There is enough proof and documentation out there that this is an orchestrated agenda but most people refuse to do their research because they can’t stand to admit that just maybe slavery, the Holocaust and all things bad can make a return. Apparently we are “civilized” now. Nope, we got civilized and the people in charge loves that, because they are HIGHLY UNCIVILIZED.
A pandemic? Why if Costco, Walmart & Amazon allowed to function but small businesses that hires 90% of the population isn’t? So let me guess Covid doesn’t exists in big box stores or the guy delivering your Amazon package. ? Hmmm. Ok then, why are their curfews and reduced store hours that in turn forces everyone to flock to the stores at a certain time, this created a huge bottle neck? Does Covid not operate from 8 a.m to 7:30 p.m. Does Covid, only come out at night like some filthy Perv*rt?
If there really is a “deadly virus”, why is it that you have to wear a mask when you enter the restaurant, take it off when you sit down and eat, then put it back on when you wanna go to the washroom. Is Covid lurking in the washroom for you like a Peter Gazer? Does Covid only exists from your table to the bathroom. Does Covid only appear when you take it your G*nitals? I really wish more people would use their brains but instead what I see us pure FEAR P*RN. To keep us all under heavily sedated constantly flowing stinky fear & it’s working. If Covid was so real and deadly why are they lying about the numbers and writing down people that died of other causes to have died from Covid? How do you even know you have Covid when the PCR test they are using WAS NOT DESIGNED TO TEST FOR NOVEL CORONA VIRUSES?..
All these questions have been answered but everyone is still going along with this Farce. Very obedient lambs to the slaughter. The information is out there people just need to stop listening to government officials, THEY ARE NOT MEDICAL EXPERTS. They are talking heads. The greatest loot of today is your mind, everyone is gunning for it.
The reason that people take off their mask when they eat in a restaurant is because you can’t eat through the mask. I stopped going into restaurants for this reason.
I also think it’s fair to call this a pandemic by definition:
occurring over a wide geographic area (such as multiple countries or continents)and typically affecting a significant proportion of the population.
With 100 million confirmed cases worldwide and 2.16 million deaths. I know you don’t think all of those doctors are deliberately misdiagnosing all those tens of millions of cases or signing death certificates with false information.
Ya !
While this may sound harsh, brand new GPU’s are not some core essential for life. If it’s the only way one can buy a new GPU, fine, but one would still be tremendously stupid or rich to pay those exorbitant price tags.
I wouldn’t buy one for now but I have a 2070 Super so I’m in good shape.
Corona BULLSH*t isn’t the cause of this. China/Taiwan has been back at work and opened for business long ago. The West and the rest of the world is the only Dummies that’s tanking their economy. But that’s a conversation for another time. This isn’t the PLANDEMICS fault. This is orchestrated and neither Nvidia or AMD cares because they are getting paid and seeking way over MSRP themselves. The investors are getting fat off this and the dummies are rushing to give them their monies as if it’s going out of style. F.O.M.O is one helluva affliction. You think AMD or Nvidia cares where the money comes from? No they don’t.
Orchestrated by who exactly?
Trusting an O’Driscoll… don’t think so buddy.
These CPUs offer marginal improvements in FPS (especially at higher res) over previous gen. Unless you haven’t updated in a while I don’t see why gamers moan so much about this.
for scalpers and miners, fk you..
So AMD manage to do what Nintendo has done and bring scalpers to the PC market. Great!
I wish people can hold themselves from buyin overpriced stuff to at least give some lesson yo scalpers with their unsold excessive stock.
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I really like reading through a post that can make men and women think. Also, thank you for allowing me to comment!