(Credit: eBay)
The first Nvidia GeForce RTX 5000 graphics cards don’t go on sale until Thursday, but that hasn’t stopped scalpers from trying to cash in.
On eBay, resellers are already offering presales for the GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080, even though they don’t have the product in-hand. Instead, they're promising they’ll be able to score the GPUs on the Jan. 30 launch day, and then immediately ship the products to customers.
"This is for a RTX 5080," says one eBay listing. "I’ll [be] standing in line at Micro Center and try to get as many as possible, so this is a presale, I’ll ship these as soon as possible."
(Credit: eBay)Interested buyers will need to pay grossly inflated prices. The RTX 5090 officially starts at $1,999. But eBay resellers are demanding between $3,000 and an absurd $7,000 to lock in their orders.
VideoCardz even spotted one eBay merchant promoting “guaranteed slots” for a few RTX 5000 GPUs, citing their employment at an unnamed electronics retailer.
(Credit: eBay)But it looks like eBay might be closely scrutinizing some of the offers. On Friday, we noticed some listings appear and then mysteriously disappear, although eBay does permit presales if certain rules are followed.
Paying double or more for a GPU is far from ideal, especially when it hasn't even launched. But scalpers are betting that some desperate buyers will pay up when supplies of the RTX 5000 GPUs are expected to be low on launch day. One UK retailer has told customers they anticipate selling out of their units in seconds or minutes, adding their current stock of RTX 5090 GPUs spans only “single digits.”
In the meantime, interested buyers in the US can expect Best Buy, Newegg, and possibly Nvidia itself to begin selling the RTX 5090 and 5080 online at 6 a.m. PST, on launch day. Micro Center should have stock at the retailer's physical stores, while Nvidia has created a "notify me" button on its site to help alert users about the upcoming sales.