Gamers want new graphics cards – but thousands are moldy in the warehouses of speculators

Many users want to buy a graphics card, but they are hardly available or just far too expensive. Now new figures show that there are probably more than enough graphics cards – but they all end up with scalpers.

A scalper stands in his garage with boxes of graphics cards and grins and posts his offers on eBay. This image is likely to cause disgust and horror in many gamers. And this picture could haunt us even longer.

And now the latest numbers show that so many graphics cards have not been on the free market for a long time. But many gamers do not notice it, because the graphics cards end up with the speculators who are aiming for a big profit and sell graphics cards for thousands of euros on eBay.

AMD and Nvidia sell more graphics cards than they have for a long time

How successful are AMD and Nvidia? The two largest chip manufacturers for graphics cards, AMD and Nvidia, can look back on a brilliant business year and have made more sales than they have in a long time. This is now shown by the figures from Jon Peddie Research (via jonpeddie.com). This is a company that specializes in market analysis:

• AMD and Nvidia together sold more than 12.7 million graphics cards in 2021. That is around 1 million more than in 2020.
• Compared to last year, AMD sold 20.8% more graphics cards for desktop PCs
• Compared to last year, Nvidia even sold 27.1% more graphics cards.

The figures clearly show that there will be more graphics cards on the market in 2021 than there have been for a long time. While it was hardly possible to deliver graphics cards at the end of 2020, the situation looks much better again according to the figures.

What is the situation for gamers? Many gamers are unlikely to notice these records or just shake their heads. Because many interested buyers should currently only notice two things when they want to buy a graphics card:

• It’s incredibly difficult to get a graphics card officially
• It’s nearly impossible to get a graphics card at a suggested retail price.

Some might then ask: Where do all the graphics cards end up when there should be more than enough and why haven’t I been able to buy one yet?

Many graphics cards end up with scalpers and miners – gamers have to pay extra

Many users already know that graphics cards are completely bought up by scalpers and resellers shortly after their release. These “middlemen” resell the graphics cards at a hefty surcharge. It is therefore not a big surprise for many users that many gamers do not have a chance to buy a graphics card.

With bots and other technical means, the scalpers grab the graphics cards as soon as they appear in the shops at halfway reasonable prices – only to be sold on at high prices.

At the moment you can buy a lot of RTX 3080 and other GeForce graphics cards on various platforms – but you pay double or even triple the recommended price.

What is the result of this situation? This almost absurd situation then leads to the fact that many users who want to upgrade their PC either have to spend a small fortune on a graphics card or simply do not buy a graphics card, because many hope that prices will fall again at some point.

At the end of the day, some users get tired of it and bite the bullet and buy a graphics card for way too much money. But miners in particular are still among the most important buyers of graphics cards, because mining is currently very profitable. The prices of cryptocurrencies are rising and many are taking the opportunity and building their mining farms. But crypto currencies have long been criticized and there are considerations to ban them.

In the meantime, miners have also discovered processors (CPUs) for themselves. Because with processors you can also farm crypto currencies and you can do that with any halfway reasonable CPU. However, it is not yet clear whether this new trend will have a negative impact on the cost of gaming processors:

Crypto miners are now buying away gaming processors because graphics cards are too expensive for them