Nerdspeak and crying nightly

Pretty much. Add one more grind to our lives. We get in a line so we can get higher position in a line, to line up for a queue. 

SeriousSnape
Pretty much. Add one more grind to our lives. We get in a line so we can get higher position in a line, to line up for a queue. 

It's lines all the way down

Thanks for the info! I’ll keep an eye out there.

I think a lot of folks have had success with best buy drops and zotac

CanuckHoser
In Canada, your best bets are scalpers, sacrifice of 1 liter of maple syrup to the GPU gods, MAYBE Best Buy drops, NewEgg bundle or Linus Tech Tips Verified Actual Gamer program.  So slim to nil unless you go scalper route or bots.

bro, in Canada there are other places you can get it. look it up, you just need to be willing to go to the store like microcenter. 

Finally got a 3070 ftw3 ultra yesterday after signing up for the queue on 11/30. Ive had zero luck getting one elsewhere so I’m really thankful for that queue.

Basically, you've gotta spend either lots of money (ebay), time chasing (trackers), or patience (queue). Take your pick.

0verfiend
Definitely go to a MICROCENTER. Maybe call them. Ask the manger how they distribute the cards.
I’ve gone to one in Minnesota and it has been very easy to get cards, relative to any of my other ventures, online or not.

Last 4 cards I bought:

EVGA 1080 ti Gaming: bought new at EVGA OFFICIAL EBAY for 649.99 and used a 15 percent off* code so it was around 550. I bought an extended 10 year warranty.

FE 3070: Casually walked in MICROCENTER at 10 am launch day and bought for retail 499.99. They had hundreds total that day, at least a hundred when I arrived. I never waited in line or got up early.

EVGA 3060ti FTW3 Ultra: Waited in line at MICROCENTER in the cold minnesota morning. Paid 649.99.

AMD RADEON Powercolor RX 6900 xt: waited in line at MICROCENTER and had the option of a few different AMD cards.

I once was randomly offered a brand new 3090 that somebody had reserved but never showed up for, after I asked if they had any 3000 series cards “in the store, but not on the shelf”. It was ~1799.99 I believe. I passed.

Check them out. St. Louis Park location has been good to me, but it’s been a while since I went there for a card, and they may have a different system besides waiting outside before they open. I believe they have a lottery sign up of some kind now, but luckily you have to physically go to the store.

Good luck. I took myself off some of the evga waiting lists when I got cards elsewhere, but some were removed for me when they forced us to only have two, and I missed the Notifications for a couple before that, like a KINGPIN.

Im currently waiting for a 3080 hybrid.

I sold all the cards I successfully bought without ever using them. It makes me sad. Every time I bought a card, a vehicle, job, or life problem arose, and I sold them before building my planned pc.

I’m currently pc-less.

Sigh.

I believe the AMD card was 999.99.

there’s some asus 3070 ti turf cards for sale right now at b and h website.
microcenter too, but in person only.

just checked.

 

I've had terrible luck getting a 30 series card. Tried the shuffles, been in multiple queues, etc. I'm not sure what else there is to do at this point. I've got a MicroCenter somewhat close to me. I suppose I could always camp.

No need to camp at most MicroCenters.   They have a daily on-site lottery on each morning there is a truck delivery.    This is the procedure for the St. Louis Park, MN store.

•  A QR code is generated daily that will be posted outside at 8:30 a.m. (Mon-Sat) and 9:30 a.m. on Sunday when there are GPUs available for sale that day. The QR code is good ONLY for that day, and changes daily.
  • Scan the QR code with your smart phone and enter the required information to get added to the waitlist.
  • The QR code will be removed 30minutes later at 9:00 a.m. (10:00 a.m. on Sunday) and the virtual line closed.
  • About 10-15minutes later at ~9:15 a.m. (~10:15 a.m. on Sunday), the list order gets randomized and the store staff will come out with the new list and call out to people to claim a card from available stock.
  • The staff usually will text you to come up to the store, other days they just ask people to come out of their cars and come up. This will be your only time to claim a voucher and you have a short window of time to go get it. If they call your name and you're away getting coffee, you've lost your chance at first pick at stock.
  • Now that you have a voucher for a card you can buy your card when they open at 10:00am (11:00am sunday).
  • Vouchers are good for that day only until 3:00pm. Previous days vouchers will NOT be honored and if you're late, then your card becomes forfit.
  • Any left over video card voucher will be sold at 3:00pm along side any unclaimed video card vouchers.
  • There is no "second raffle" and is strictly first come first serve at 3. There is a blue taped line on the floor before the BYO department that people line up at.
  

There is a Discord channel for each store.  Users post what brands/cards are delivered on the trucks.   I watched the discord channel for the MN store for a month and noticed that most EVGA deliveries were on Sundays.   I went to the store on a Sunday last August, scanned the QR code and filled in my details; email address and phone number.  Then waited in my car until it was time for the lottery to begin.   I was like the 4th person whose name was called out, so I had the choice of cards and selected a EVGA 3080 Ti FTW which was the card I wanted.  Can't get much easier than this.
 
MicroCenter limits card purchases to one per customer per 30 days.

The QR posting was changed to an hour earlier during the holiday shopping period in December. I don't know if it has been moved back to 8:30/9:30 AM.
 

Stop trying to buy one worked well for me.
 
Had an EVGA 1080 FTW2, since 2017, ignored 20 series as no better, for rasterisation RTX was just a sales gimmick that gen.
Put down my name on queue for EVGA 3080 in January 2021, made promise to self not to look further (ignore scalpers), beyond a quick monthly check on Scan, and Amazon (UK).
Also decided if it got to 2022, I'd just wait for next gen, see if AMD could take the lead, and return to being an XFX customer again.
Probably didn't actually look more than 4 times, and saw no cards for sale at all.
 
Then on 19th November, saw Amazon EU had two EVGA 3080 Ti FTW3 for sale, seemed a reasonable price given PC components in UK are £ per $ in normal times.
$1,430 direct from EVGA, and it was £1,560 direct from Amazon EU.
Downside was a £312 import Duty Deposit (Thanks Brexit), just found out I got all that back yesterday, while discussing prices with a New Egg buyer that paid $2,050 in US. Thought I'd lost that.
Due to that Tax, I procrastinated for over an hour, and was surprised the cards hadn't gone, I bought one, got it 5 days later, and stuck my 1080 away as an emergency RMA backup.
 
I would have given up if I got to 2022, seems I was very, very, lucky that nobody after a high end EGA card in entire EU saw them, in that hour, and I have no idea why.
So to be honest, without sheer luck, I'd just be waiting for next gen by now.

Best Buy if you wanna get something at a low price. This might be your last chance too cause I can't see Nvidia releasing anymore "affordable" gpus. If people are willing to pay the prices they are then that's the market price and if they were smart they'd sell their products at the market norm.

Bestbuy had a big drop today with pretty much every founders cards along with lots of other. I kept getting the dreaded verify popup ending with out of stock. Still there must be a few lucky gamers that got one and probably some of the scourge of the earth scalpers.  
Meanwhile I have been trying to get eveything from a 3060 ti up to a 3080 from Newegg Shuffle. After three weeks of entering off and on I finally got an Evga 3060 Ti XC Gaming today!  Had ordered a RX 6900 XT on Amazon yesterday but canceled after snagging the 3060 Ti.   Yes I know there is a wide gap between performance, but at a little over 1k less I will be fine until the 40x0 series hits. 

BestBuy is absolutely terrible - their system is easily abused by bots and their website is buggy/slow on drop days, you have a very low chance of succeeding especially with a 3080/3060ti, but really with any 30 series card. Same with EVGA's B stock unfortunately, abused by botters - there are bots built specifically for EVGA checkout. At the end of the day, bots are fairly sophisticated and people that use them will just pay for proxies at residential addresses that make them appear like real users.
 
The best options for scoring a card without paying a scalper or buying/coding a bot yourself are:
1. Microcenter for "near" retail pricing. They have a random selection process that requires you to show up in person, so you're not competing with bots. Join the unofficial microcenter discord server to get stock alerts. Downside is you have to be close to a Microcenter or it's a big time sink.
 
2. Newegg shuffle: random selection, but online, so it's worse than Microcenter's system as bots can just sign up for multiple Newegg accounts I'm assuming. I've heard of people having luck with this, but I never won after signing up every single day for a month straight. You also have to know the market really well because Newegg will try to screw you over on price if you're not careful, they sometimes use scalper pricing and take advantage of GPU buyers (sometimes not as well, you just have to know the retail pricing before committing to a bundle). There are also various discount codes that you can use with Newegg to bring the price down.
 
3. Antonline. They have "decent" but not amazing deals on GPU bundles, and at least you aren't paying a scalper. I got my 3080 XC Ultra through one of these bundles when it randomly became in stock at 2 AM and I happened to see it out of pure luck. Since I was building a new PC, $1,424.95 for a 3080, 280mm water cooler which I needed anyway, gaming kb/mouse which I didn't need, and an 850w psu which I needed anyway wasn't a terrible deal - I paid $260 over retail for all of those things combined. I sold the keyboard/mouse separately to make some money back as well, so at the end of the day I overpaid by about $200 for all of the items, or about $66/item.