News Amazon sells a legacy MSI CPU air cooler for $5,340 — the Core Frozr L launched in 2016 with a $50 MSRP

[Admin]

MSI is selling a nearly 10-year-old air cooler for over 10,000% above MSRP.

Amazon sells a legacy MSI CPU air cooler for $5,340 — the Core Frozr L launched in 2016 with a $50 MSRP : Read more

 

[Dementoss]

Ridiculous high prices, are often used by Amazon Marketplace sellers, to stop their last item selling before new stock arrives, to avoid Amazon's high relisting fees.

 

[bit_user]

This is not news. It's simply a runaway pricing algorithm.

Those kinds of prices seem a lot more rare, these days, but I will occasionally see some product that's gone out of production experience a substantial price spike. Algorithmic pricing first hit the scene more than a decade ago.

It's too bad Amazon doesn't let you search for what prices they actually sold at, the way ebay does. Because, if nobody is buying the cooler at this price, then it doesn't represent a fair market value.

There's an interesting foot note that, if an item does sell for a grossly inflated price, it could actually be some kind of money laundering scheme. I assume law enforcement is probably on the lookout for such suspicious sales and some bot would notice if a buyer or seller had a large volume of them.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

They'll also do that so they can cut the price to the regular price and advertise it as something like an 80% price cut, but even for the Amazon Resale listing price I'd grab an AIO before I'd grab that.

 

[COLGeek]

Surely a typo/mistake.

 

[bit_user]

Surely a typo/mistake.

Could also be algorithmic pricing, though.

Try searching on amazon for some random, unremarkable video card, sometime. Then, switch the order of the results to "Price: highest first". I just did that with the RX 550, which launched in 2018 with a MSRP of $79.

Here, I found one listed for $1,020.45!

Amazon.com: Graphics CardsFanless Cooling System Fit for ASROCK Radeon RX550 RX 550 2G GDDR5 Video Card Graphics Cards New Desktop PC Support Fit for AMD Intel CPU Motherboard Computer Game Map : Electronics

Buy Graphics CardsFanless Cooling System Fit for ASROCK Radeon RX550 RX 550 2G GDDR5 Video Card Graphics Cards New Desktop PC Support Fit for AMD Intel CPU Motherboard Computer Game Map: Graphics Cards - Amazon.com ✓ FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases

www.amazon.com

That's the most extreme example, but there are like a dozen models listed for over $500. It makes no actual sense to price a RX 550 that high. It's an old card that's not particularly in demand. Even during the crypto boom, you still probably wouldn't have seen them selling for that much!

Here's one resource that delves into a little depth on the algorithms Amazon uses.

https://medium.com/codex/algorithmic-pricing-part-i-the-risks-and-opportunities-d7ae8a9e9484
​

They also mention Amazon's API, and here's where I think some of the most egregious examples might occur. I suspect these are the result of 3rd party plugins, but it's not something I have any direct knowledge about. When it comes to items sold by Amazon, itself, they typically do not have runaway issues like I tend to see with marketplace sellers. I guess that's what makes this cooler a somewhat unique example.

 

[commandobunnysuit]

Very possible, when I worked for a bleeding edge semiconductor company. Occasionally another group would reach out across the company for obsolete parts to assemble a PC to look at issues that would come up many years in the past to get a better understanding of when the silicon changed... If it was a critical issue, I could see the company spending that kind of money to replicate a problem. Might just be a hopeful person waiting for a desperate company to pay for a part that can't be found.

 

[bit_user]

... I could see the company spending that kind of money to replicate a problem. Might just be a hopeful person waiting for a desperate company to pay for a part that can't be found.

To the extent this pricing behavior is defensible, I think the algorithms are trying to exploit the rapid appreciation in value that can happen when demand for something suddenly surges, or other situations where someone has some kind of need to build a machine to some exact spec.

However, what's a little weird about this case is it's no a marketplace seller, but actually sold by Amazon. I can't remember another time I've seen such a wild price from Amazon, themselves. So, either Amazon made a change to their pricing algorithms (which I suppose happens quite a lot) and this listing just stumbled into a corner case, or it's as @COLGeek says and is due to some sort of operator error.

I checked the camelcamel listing for it, but it shows the current price at $23.70 and lists the product as out-of-stock (Amazon claims to have 20 in stock). At no scale does the price history show wild gyrations, either.

MSI CORE FROZR L LGA 2066/AM4 Hydro-Dynamic Bearing 120 mm Fan CPU Cooler - Black

Amazon price tracking & price history for MSI CORE FROZR L LGA 2066/AM4 Hydro-Dynamic Bearing 120 mm Fan CPU Cooler - Black

camelcamelcamel.com

 

[snemarch]

However, what's a little weird about this case is it's no a marketplace seller, but actually sold by Amazon. I can't remember another time I've seen such a wild price from Amazon, themselves.

I sometimes see similar insanely-priced legacy hardware at Proshop, which doesn't have marketplace sellers, so there shouldn't be shenanigans around relisting fees or money laundering involved.

In the case of Proshop, I wonder if the algorithmic pricing happens at the supplier side (some items are not in local stock, but shipped directly from suppliers, so the listing price might be based on direct integration with supplier price API?), or it's always an in-house algorithm that has insane, non-clipped weights for whatever input data

 

[Lemming Overlord]

Ridiculous high prices, are often used by Amazon Marketplace sellers, to stop their last item selling before new stock arrives, to avoid Amazon's high relisting fees.

This

 

[Dntknwitall]

MSI is selling a nearly 10-year-old air cooler for over 10,000% above MSRP.

Amazon sells a legacy MSI CPU air cooler for $5,340 — the Core Frozr L launched in 2016 with a $50 MSRP : Read more

That price tag is called a "Place holder". it is not the actual price, it is either no longer available or it is on backorder. Either way it is not the intention to sell at that price that is why it is so high. This is what makes people on marketplace think they have an item that is so valuable when in fact it is not. This also makes the market get saturated with junk that really has no value value, but because Amazon has that price listed that is what people want for their used junk. Amazon.ca has it priced at $12,099.51 CAD, nobody is paying that for a cooler no matter what the specs call for. Just a place holder price!

 

[bit_user]

That price tag is called a "Place holder". it is not the actual price, it is either no longer available or it is on backorder.

Did you click the actual link, because they claim to have 16 units in stock!

This is also true of several of those RX 550 listings, including the link I posted above, which is why the theory doesn't hold water that it's just to keep the listing from getting dropped. Not only that, this is sold by amazon, and I don't imagine they charge themselves the same kind of fees they apply to marketplace sellers.