[SOLVED] Retail Scalping?

[5900x]

In my region, the prices are normally higher than everywhere else in the world including import tax, sales tax, every-middleman-scalp tax because poor world and what not, but the price of 3080Ti (Strix) is still more than the base models of other brands of 4070Ti. When I asked my local shop about this he said since no stocks of 30x cards are coming, the "brand" didn't reduce the price. Now I don't know if this is true around the world in their respective regional pricing or is just the retail scalping here. Are the prices like this in your regions?

 

[Lutfij]

In my region,
Where would that be?

It's not exactly scalping per se, it's about stock availability and other global socio-economic factors that either drive up or down the cost of an imported good/item. Artificial manipulation of stock due to fears of the market loosing out on goods(or lack of new stock of products coming in through their ports) might also drive that price up. Supply and demand can also affect the cost of an item.

If you look at the costs of older tech being so close to newer tech, retailers or importers might favor newer class of hardware in hopes that warranty is also honored by AIB partners as opposed to older cards being phased out from the GPU chip makers end. If you had a deep pocket, AIB partners could support the oldest of hardware but that wouldn't do them any good(since newer tech can and will drive other aspects of the computing industry forward) apart from being rich for a short period of time.

 

[bill001g]

The list price of 3080ti was set when the manufactures decided they would become the scalpers. They figured why sell the card for less and then let the scalper mark it up when they could just sell it for more to start with.

The MSRP pricing during that time was stupid. Most have not actually changed the MSRP number but what they actually sell the cards for was much lower. 3080ti were going for about 1/2 the MSRP say 6 months ago. Now that they have stopped manufacturing the cards and have gone to make 40 series cards.
The price of the 30 series cards has gone back up mostly because of lack of new supply. The only good thing is people seem to be resisting the higher pricing of the 40 series cards. There seems to be plenty of stock.

 

[Eximo]

Just a case of them knowing what they paid for the GPU, not updating the listing and hoping someone will buy it at that price. How all old electronics stay on the shelf.

They are just waiting for someone that heard the 3080Ti is a good GPU to come along and buy it. Maybe they looked up an old build guide for example. The way search results tend to work, the longer something has been around the more likely it will float to the top of relevancy. A new GPU might not have enough written about it to compare.

 

[hotaru.hino]

Prices for older/outgoing hardware doesn't drop in most markets just because something new came out. The only time there is a significant price drop is the store is trying to get rid of stock because they figure keeping the product is going to cost them more because it takes up space they could use to stock newer products.

Otherwise, the store still has to buy the product at some price from the manufacturer. If they have enough clout, they may be able to get the manufacturer to buy them back but given the situation in your region, that's probably not going to be a thing. And they probably don't want to sell it at a loss, so they'll just keep it at whatever price it was hoping someone would be desperate enough to pick it up.

As far as the manufacturer (either NVIDIA/AMD or the AIBs) go, they don't care about price/performance. They care about what it cost to make the thing and how much they need to get that cost back.